15b: Replacements
by cathrl
Summary: With G-Force out of action, Force Two has to step up and deal with any Spectran attacks. That was the plan, at least...
1. Chapter 1

This one's been a long time coming - many thanks to my husband for beta-reading, and the denizens of Bird Scramble for their comments.

As is probably obvious from the numbering, this is a long way down an AU story arc. If you haven't read any of my other stories, the setup probably won't make much sense and at the very least I'd suggest you read 15a: Grounded first (it's only short).

As always, any comments are very welcome.

* * *

 **Replacements**

It felt wrong walking into his old office. His muscle memory was tuned to sitting in the wheelchair in here. He'd misjudged the doorhandle height by over a foot.

Wrong. But oh, so much better.

"Commander!" Todd shot out of the chair as if he'd been caught doing something wrong, and Mark had to suppress a grin.

"As you were, Corp... no, that's Sergeant now, I believe."

Todd didn't suppress the grin. "Yes, sir. I wasn't expecting to see you here. You don't need to..."

"Jason's doing enough worrying for the two of us."

Todd frowned.

"You haven't been watching the news reports? Force Two's out for the first time. I'm showing my support by not playing mother hen."

Saying it out loud, to someone who knew who he was but didn't need him to pretend confidence, was a surprising relief. He'd worked closely with Todd for several months. Todd would doubtless guess that what he meant was "I can't bear to sit and watch." And, thankfully, be far too professional to comment on it. He was glancing wistfully at the blank screen on the wall, though, and Mark took pity on him.

"Turn it on. It's all over the news channels on repeating loop."

Ever since the war started, there had been a little gaggle of... plane-spotters? Spaceship-spotters? They apparently spent their free time camped out on the next headland along in the hopes of seeing the Phoenix launch. A couple of them had wobbly digital footage of a ship which was most definitely _not_ the Phoenix breaking the surface and blasting for orbit, and seemed to be enjoying their newfound celebrity status as international news networks scrambled to interview them. They hadn't had much to say beyond "it was red" and "no, we've not seen it before." Not that it hadn't flown before, of course. Just only at night.

Todd watched the grainy footage with interest, the interviews with a smirk, and muted the volume when the reporter handed back to the studio 'experts'.

"Force Two? When are you going to tell the media?"

"When they get back, I expect." He wasn't looking forward to it. He was - just about - capable of walking onto a stage without anyone realising he had a problem. No, what he didn't fancy was the inevitable questions about being replaced. Even the dimmest reporter would be wondering why Force Two had gone out instead of G-Force, not as well as them.

"Oh, I have some news," Todd said, breaking the awkward silence. "Not as exciting as that. Lieutenant O'Leary passed basic flight."

"Good grief." Dave had been failing that test for what, a year? More? Yes, more. "So he'll be -" He stopped, frowning at the screen. On the Phoenix, that distortion flicker was nearly always the prelude to a Spectran hack into their systems.

Nothing happened. No purple-clad irritants.

"Something wrong?" asked Todd.

"Your screen's fritzing. Might want to get that looked at. What's Dave planning to do next?"

"In confidence, he's working up the courage to ask Lieutenant Alouita for a recommendation to one of the top level evasive manoeuvres courses."

Mark snorted. "He hasn't thought that one through. Lieutenant Alouita doesn't make those recommendations, not formally, and he can't have the Condor's. I know Dave's a darn good driver, but any time someone seems to get special treatment, we risk being noticed."

"So you think he should...?"

"Pick something lower level that he can get recommended for by me, or Nykinnen, or whoever does it at ISO Racing - which probably still isn't Jason, not officially. It's plausible for me to sign off on 'ISO Racing's top driver who's also on Team Seven suggested I do this one' provided it's the next logical step for him and the top ISO Racing guys have agreed. Dave'll need to impress the tutors there enough to get the high level rec from them, just like everyone else. If they want Jason's opinion they'll ask for it directly." They probably would, too. Jason was very much ISO Racing's top driver these days. It was time to start thinking of a way to make it plausible that he wasn't a high-ranked driver within ISO itself.

Todd nodded. "I'll tell Dave."

"Tell him I said it, too, and explain to him why it has to work that way and that I'm not a bastard who enjoys red tape? Now -"

All the lights went out. No flash, no dimming. Instant thick blackness in the tiny windowless room.

"That's weird," said Todd's voice. "No emergency lights."

"Is there one in here?" He'd never considered it before.

"One over each door. Tested last week."

That did take it into the weird category. Mark picked up the phone, muscle memory telling him exactly where it was on the desk. No dial tone - and ISO had an old-fashioned, work-no-matter-what system.

"I'll open -"

"Wait." That was pure premonition. Something was beyond weird, it was _wrong_... and had been since that screen had flickered.

Todd knew who he was already, and had done for years. Grant would have to live with him being added to the very, very short list of people who also knew what the transmutation trigger was. Mark slipped his bracelet on and went into the transmutation cycle.

Aborted it before he'd even started. Sheer, silent terror hit in a wave. _My implant's failed again_.

His heart rate was up around 200 and he wanted to throw up. It was several seconds of numb panic before he thought _and so has my bracelet_.

And all the power.

And all the emergency, battery-powered lighting.

"I think we've been hit by an EMP," he said.

"A what?"

"Electromagnetic pulse. They take out electronics. Can you open the door? Let's get some daylight in here."

He could hear Todd's uncertain steps towards the door into the Team Seven common room, imagine him feeling for the wall and then the doorhandle.

The door opened to his worst nightmare. Spectrans on their feet. ISO personnel on their knees. And at least one silenced gunshot.

"Shut it!" he snapped. "Now!"

No choice, even though heads turned towards them.

Todd seemed to take forever to respond, but finally the door slammed shut and there was the sound of fumbling with the internal bolts in the blackness. And what Mark suspected was the sound of bullets hitting the reinforced steel. Thank goodness for an office which had originally been planned as an armoury.

"Are you armed?" he asked.

"In my locker next door. Sorry, sir."

Mark fingered his boomerang, sheathed in his pocket. "We're going to lockdown - stay here. I have to go."

And, only half fit and with no implant enhancements, try to stop Team Seven being massacred. If it wasn't already too late.

He'd been hit by bullets before, in birdstyle. They bruised like hell. He tried not to think about them tearing through him in a Team Seven uniform. _They won't be outside the other door_ , he told himself. _They have no reason to suspect that this office has two doors_.

But they might figure it out. They'd stopped shooting at the door to the common room. He needed to move.

The corridor was dim, lit only by the daylight from the small window at the end, twenty metres away. His implant should have been compensating. Nothing.

Even so, the two Spectrans in front of the main door to the Team Seven common room were silhouetted and clearly visible, looking in through the open door. He could hear raised voices. Again he should have been able to hear what they were saying, and again he couldn't. He reached for the boomerang again, and stopped. It was a horrible throw, even when he was in practice. In the narrow hallway, it would be near-impossible to hit both of them, and the sonic capability was electronic. Vulnerable to an EMP? He simply didn't know, and the only way to find out would be to make the throw. Reluctantly, he took his hand out of his pocket, still empty.

 _You're coming out of the dark_ , he told himself. _They won't see you coming. Head kick to the first, straight fight with the second. Might even create a distraction for those inside._

Seven metres, give or take. Six strides, launch, spin, kick. The first Spectran fell like a rag doll. The second swung round, gun coming up. Mark let his momentum carry him through, knocking the other flying. The gun went off, bullets spraying the ceiling, but he had hold of the Spectran now. Grappling wasn't his speciality but he was far better at it than some Spectran goon. Even without implant strength, necks were fragile.

He stood up to find the common room door shut. From inside, gunshots and shouts - human this time, he thought. If he opened the door, he'd most likely get his head blown off by his own people. They'd have to look after themselves for now, while he figured out what the heck was going on. The quickest way to black section was back past his office door, but that way was all internal. Pitch dark and a maze of corridors. If he couldn't see what was going on, he couldn't strategise. The long way round was his only real option. Picking up a machinegun he hoped he wouldn't need to use, he headed for the lighter end of the corridor. Just round the corner to the left was a big window, looking out across the lawns to the woods which lay between the ISO buildings and the main runway. Maybe he'd be able to see something useful from there. He tried not to consider that it might be three mecha, dozens of squads of goons, and a couple of Blackbird patrols.

The expanse of grass was deserted, which was something. But beyond it, half a mile away in the belt of trees which separated the main ISO complex from the runway, his view was blocked by what looked like a solid, creamy-white wall, stretching left and right as far as he could see from the window. It stretched up, too, completely blocking the sky. It was flat and featureless, but unless it was hundreds of metres high it had to be curving back and over the buildings. Some sort of dome, with them inside it. It couldn't possibly be solid, and that meant it was a forcefield. Mark stared at it, trying to imprint the image on his memory so he'd know if it changed. Oh, to have Jason at his shoulder right now, remembering every last detail. Even without him, it didn't take much imagination to realise that it must surround the whole complex, and that it was responsible for the failure in all their electronics, and that there would be more Spectrans inside it than the few who had attacked Team Seven.

What he needed was a prisoner. Someone he could get some sort of operational details from. And, as he peered round the next corner, he was in luck. A single Spectran goon, apparently unarmed, and nervous as hell.

He hadn't expected the man to choke out "Mark!" as he was caught and pinned. Or for him to be no taller than Mark himself was. Or to recognise the voice.

He released the chokehold. Just slightly. "So, Don. Off to rejoin your Spectran friends? You've got ten seconds to persuade me otherwise."

"My... friends?" The sound was suspiciously close to a sob. "I speak better Spectran than anyone else in black section. I volunteered to come try to figure out what's going on."

"And how did you get down here?"

Don pulled a handful of gel capsules from his pocket. "Out through the window and back in on the ground floor. You've seen this before. It dissolves stuff."

"I thought you couldn't go outside."

The other snorted. "Turns out if I really need to, and if Chris sticks me full of God-knows-what, and if I don't mind puking my guts out right afterwards, I can. For about a minute and a half. You want to tie me up and leave me for dead? I really don't care. But try to give me back to the Spectrans and yeah, I'll be on my knees begging you not to, because that's where my line is right now. That what you want?"

Mark considered him. Definite smell of vomit. Pupils more dilated than they should be. And yes, Wade was terrified - and not of him.

"How good's your Spectran?"

"As good as their human recruits. Probably better. I've had more practice."

"There's a bunch of goons back round that corner - they were attacking Team Seven. At least some of them are dead. Probably not all. Go find out what you can. I advise you not to try to go into the commonroom dressed like that."

He let the other man go. No need for threats. Don must know what betraying his planet again would mean for him. And Don nodded, straightening green mask and uniform.

"Yes, Commander." He left in what wasn't a bad impression of a Spectran marching style, and Mark slipped inside the nearest door to wait and see what happened.

He took the opportunity to stretch out and try to warm up. He'd never had Jason's ability to go straight from inactivity to explosive action, at least not without consequences later. These days he could barely do it at all.

 _Thank God they weren't Blackbirds._ But the bullets they'd fired hadn't been any less dangerous for that. There must have been casualties, every one someone he worked with.

 _Don't think about that. Move on. Strategise_.

No power; no comms signals. If this was an inside job - which seemed all too likely - then their attackers would know that ISO was on high alert, the sort of alert which involved G-Force being out.

Except that it was Force Two who'd gone out. If they'd been infiltrated at a high enough level for Spectra to know that...

Mark glanced out of the window. The milky white of the force shield was unchanged. He could still see the same half of the same tree. That was something, at least. But as timing went, this was dreadful. Force Two, out there on their first interstellar assignment, and base control with no power. Rick had wanted a chance to prove he had what it took. He'd got it now, in spades.

So, whoever was in charge here for Spectra thought ISO was relatively undefended. Which it was. But he almost certainly didn't know G-Force were here.

Tiny was still in bed and ill enough that he might as well not be here. Princess _wasn't_ here - she was at the hospital having her wisdom teeth removed. General anaesthetic. As per standard operating procedure, she'd have left her bracelet with Anderson. She'd know nothing about any of this. Keyop should be in black section. Jason should be in black section - why hadn't he come down here instead of Don? His Spectran was certainly adequate.

He was starting to wonder if he'd been had when he heard approaching voices and footsteps. Two people, one limping heavily. One native Spectran speaker and one not. Don's accent wasn't bad, and he had the cringing honorifics down to a fine art.

"... of course, sir. If I cannot help by delivering your crucial information, I will of course assist you to the command centre. Then I will return and destroy the low-life ISO scum myself, sir. Once you and your knowledge are safe. Sir."

A pause. Then, "Tell me. Who is your commanding officer?"

Don didn't hesitate. "Commander Breznak, sir. I'm honoured to -"

"There isn't a -"

There was a crack of bone and the thump of something heavy hitting the floor. Mark opened the door cautiously. Don was on his feet in a passable imitation of a combat stance. A blue-uniformed Spectran lay in a heap, neck at an unnatural angle, hand on a half-drawn weapon.

Don saw him, and the competent mask slipped. "I..."

 _You proved yourself._ "Did he tell you anything?"

"That he needed to get to what I think is parking lot C to report. He was too damn bright. He knew nobody in this uniform should be walking around alone, or asking to be told operational details, and I wasn't doing what he expected, whatever that might be. All his men were dead, as far as I could see. Pile of bodies outside the Team Seven commonroom door. Someone in Team Seven didn't notice one of them was faking it."

Mark didn't care about dead Spectrans, given what they'd done to Team Seven. He still didn't plan to discuss it with Don Wade. They dragged the body into the room where he'd waited, searched it for anything useful (entirely lacking), and he continued to think desperately. Oh for a working comms system, or just a bracelet radio. As it was, he could wander around trying to find people, he could go build himself an assault squad based on whoever was still standing in Team Seven, or he could get to black section and some high level strategic advice.

"Show me how to get into black section."

Don gulped. "I can't. Major Grant said he'd shoot anyone who tried."

"You think Grant would shoot me?"

A half-grin. "I think the Spectrans would do that."

 _Dammit, he's right._ Mark thought again. There were no stairwells into black section. There was one direct, level entrance - and if he was Grant, he'd have it locked down tight and a minigun on it manned by the two people he was most sure would shoot first and ask questions afterwards. At night he'd have considered sending Jason up the outside of the building to a window - but himself, at two in the afternoon, in street clothes? That left one option.

"How are you at vertical leaps?"


	2. Chapter 2

The main black section elevator had never been advertised. It wasn't anywhere near the ISO front door. Nor was it overtly different from any of the many other local elevators. Get in this one and you'd discover that it took you down to a couple of underused areas of basement storage.

Unless, of course, you knew the right codes. The panel was dark and useless now. Mark could only hope that the security systems in the shaft were equally inoperative. At least the elevator car was here, rather than blocking the shaft higher up. Getting through the floor from below would have been a real pain.

He pointed at the access hatch in the ceiling. "Can you get up there?"

Don gave him a look that was pure disdain and jumped for it. One fist to knock the hatch loose, the other caught the edge of the opening, and he swung himself through and onto the roof of the car.

Mark cursed silently and followed him. Thank goodness this hadn't happened a couple of weeks ago. He still wasn't back to full fitness... but he was close. He'd need to be. ISO elevator shafts didn't have ladders up the sides. Security reasons. And, dammit, he was going to lead the next bit, not Don Wade.

A full floor of blank wall lay between him and the sole opening above him. Ten feet per floor, and then some for the inter-floor voids. Close to twelve feet vertically to the ledge. No room for a run-up, or any way to generate momentum.

 _You can do this_ , he told himself, and leapt.

He couldn't. Not twelve feet. But he made something close to four, and that meant he could hang from the ledge and then pull himself up. Upper body strength, after six months in a wheelchair, was a non-issue. One knee on the ledge, then the other, find a handhold on the rough brick of the shaft wall, and he stood up facing the doors.

 _Please, don't just open fire when you realise someone's coming up the shaft._ He started tapping. Long, long, short. Pause. Short, four longs. Pause. Repeat.

After three repeats, the door opened and Mark found himself looking down the barrel of black section security's standard issue firearm, with two more just behind it.

"Hands up!" the captain barked.

"Only if you want me to fall back down there." Mark did raise his right hand over his head. "Captain, I don't have time for games. Do you really think anyone could impersonate me this well?"

"You should have been at the last Halloween party, Commander," one of the other guards muttered, but all three guns were lowered, and the captain offered him a hand.

"Sorry, Commander."

"For what? I'd have torn strips off you if you hadn't been guarding it." He turned round and leaned back into the shaft. "Don? Put the hatch back - then can you get up here?"

It made him feel rather better that it took Don three attempts, and even then he had to be hauled into the corridor.

"Commander," the captain said as his men wound the doors to the elevator shaft closed again, "the senior staff are in briefing room one, if you want to join them."

"I -" He stopped. Down another corridor, someone was yelling for backup.

"You and you. With me." A random guard and the captain. He didn't want to leave the elevator shaft unguarded.

The shouts were coming from the top of another elevator shaft: the one which dropped to the level of the Phoenix's hangar deep beneath ISO. One not very senior guard stood there, fingers white on his gun, eyes glued to the doors.

"Step back, son," the captain said, not unkindly. "Commander?"

"Hush." The kid was right. There was definitely something going on in there. Someone coming up the shaft.

"Open it," he said, boomerang out. "Just a fraction." If there was a squad of Spectrans coming up that way, flashing sharp blades in the shaft should put them off really quite efficiently even without the sonics. Efficiently enough that it would be worth losing his weapon. He'd never be able to make a throw which would bring it back in a space that narrow.

The captain - Adams, his nametag read - nodded, hit the manual release, and eased the doors a fraction apart.

 _Who goes there?_ Mark didn't say it. Instead, he called, "Report!"

"G-2... reporting..."

Jason's voice, no question. He sounded exhausted.

"Open it!" Mark snapped.

A cablegun grappling hook buried itself in the corridor ceiling almost before the doors were fully open. A couple of minutes after that, the Condor appeared, both hands locked round the pistolgrip of the cablegun, swinging from side to side and using the cable retraction mechanism as a ratchet. Mechanical, spring-based, non-electronic, and not particularly powerful. The moment Jason's feet hit the floor he dropped the gun, leaving it to reel itself slowly into the hook. He winced as he lowered his arms.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Spectra," said the young guard.

"No shit. Doing what?"

Mark shook his head. "EMP, I think. Power's out, and there's a massive forcefield all round ISO. And we're under assault."

"Your bracelet as dead as mine?"

Mark held his hand up, showing the blank face. "Who else is down there?"

Jason shrugged and winced again. "Standard guards and maintenance. I told them to sit tight and stay locked down." He rotated his shoulders gingerly, one at a time. "Not one of my better ideas."

"Nobody else will be coming up that way, at least." Mark didn't know exactly how deep the elevator shaft was, but the Phoenix's hangar was well below sea level. How high were the cliffs round here? Probably two hundred feet, maybe more... and then the ground sloped up from the clifftop to the ISO complex.

"You okay?" he asked.

"I will be."

"Then we'd best go find Anderson."

Someone had opened every door off the corridor - not a bad idea, given that they couldn't possibly guard every window in every room - and Jason gasped as he got his first glance outside.

"That's one hell of a forcefield. How are they generating something like that? When nothing else electrical works at all?"

"You said it." Mark glanced sideways. He needed to ask. "Implant?"

"Like it was never there. Creepy as all hell. And it wasn't an EMP. The emergency generator we hauled out ran just fine and generated nothing. I have no idea what could do that. Are _you_ okay?"

"Better now I know it's not just me, I guess." He checked his tree. Still half visible. That was something, at least. He'd had a horror that the thing might be getting smaller.

The briefing room wasn't as full as he'd expected. Anderson was at the head of the table. Ivanov. Grant.

The emergency equipment chest lay open on the floor to the side. Hardened comms, serious batteries, all stored inside a Faraday cage which would have protected them from any EMP. Protocol said that the first thing command should have done would be to hand them out and get people at vantage points observing what was going on. There should have been _one_ left in this room, clamped to Anderson's ear. Looked like Jason was right.

One of Grant's security team stood each side of the door, wearing that 'I'm part of the furniture' expression which Mark assumed security officers had lessons in. Message runners. No comms was an absolute nightmare.

The screen behind Anderson's seat was dark and dead. Someone had found a flipchart stand. The visible sheet held a rough sketch of the ISO complex, contained in a big circle. Standard symbols indicated known and suspected locations of friendlies and hostiles. Most of them were 'uncertain'. None of them were 'dealt with'.

He turned to the men at the door. "Get Wade in here."

The man on the left saluted and left, and Mark headed for the flipchart. There wasn't much he could add, but 'known friendlies' in the Team Seven area of the complex together with 'hostiles, dealt with' was better than nothing.

"Casualties?" asked Ivanov.

"Yes." He didn't know who, or how many, or how bad, and this wasn't the time to worry about it.

Jason took the pen from him and marked 'known friendlies' in the hangar level. "What's Don got to do with this?" he asked. There was careful control in his tone.

"He's gone out to infiltrate the Spectran ranks," Grant said flatly.

"You're kidding. He'll never cope."

"He did fine," said Mark before the two of them could turn it into a slanging match. "Unfortunately he ran up against a bluesuit who made him. But -"

The door opened again, and Don came in. His body language screamed 'fear' even worse than it had downstairs.

"You wanted me, Commander?"

Mark pointed at the flipchart. "Anything you can add to that, based on what you heard?"

Don nodded stiffly and headed for it, giving the table a wide berth. Grant's chair, Mark realised. Major Grant had, after all, been responsible for Don's interrogation.

He marked hostile headquarters in the western parking lot, two uncertain hostile strongholds beyond it, and an uncertain friendly marker in a corridor which Mark knew for sure he hadn't been in.

"Elaborate," snapped Grant, and Don dropped the pen on the floor, visibly trembling.

"I..."

"Easy, son," said Ivanov. "The parking lot?"

Don retrieved the pen, making a visible effort to control himself. He pointed it first at Mark's 'dealt with' hostiles outside Team Seven. "The captain of this squad wanted to report there. I think it's their command centre." The pen moved to the two uncertain hostiles. "The grammar he used... they came in more than one craft, and they set up HQ in front of them. This one" - he indicated the uncertain friendly - "I'm not sure, but he didn't want to go this way even though it would have been a shorter route to the parking lot. But he might have made me by then."

"Yes. What happened to this source of useful information?" Grant's tone was icy, and Mark stepped in.

"Like Don said, he made him. Started asking questions about who his CO was. He was a bluesuit, and we know they're not idiots. Don killed him in self-defence when he pulled a gun, and I'd have done the same. Now, if you want a goon to interrogate, G-2 and I will go fetch you one."

He stared Grant down - he was _not_ a broken traitor to be intimidated - and the other grimaced and looked away.

"We need to discuss our next move," Anderson said. "Security, I want all available relevant personnel in here in ten minutes. Send scientists and engineers to room two. Wade, that includes you."

He didn't specify what relevant was beyond that, and the man at the door didn't ask before leaving. Mark only hoped it included someone useful. Twenty senior operatives armed to the teeth would be good.

Wait a minute, though. Armed to the teeth with what?

"Sergeant," he said to the remaining security officer," can I see your sidearm?"

Grant's men probably also had training in not looking surprised when asked odd questions by G-Force. The man handed it over without so much as a raised eyebrow.

As he'd thought. He'd seen the other guards carrying them, had several aimed at him by the elevators. ISO's latest standard issue. Laser sights, electronic trigger. Aware that every eye in the room was on him, Mark pointed it at the window and fired.

Not even a click.

There was a horrified silence, broken by Jason casually tossing the cablegun onto the table.

"This'll still work," he said, one eye on Anderson, and Mark belatedly remembered the arguments about whether it should or shouldn't be upgraded with the latest electronic trigger technology. Jason had been insistent that it had a trigger mechanism he could fix in the field. "What else do we have that's all-mechanical?"

"There's a revolver in my desk drawer," said Grant. "Not much ammunition."

"We must have plenty of ammunition..." Jason tailed off. "Let me guess. In the armoury, electronic locks, UPS-based backup, no manual systems."

Grant nodded silently.

And Mark realised that no, there wasn't a minigun trained on the main entrance, because miniguns were electric-powered. The Spectrans had known exactly where to find Team Seven. He could only hope they had less information on the location of black section.


	3. Chapter 3

Keyop tried to focus on the discussion at hand: what to do about the dozens of people in the ISO buildings, most of them in indefensible locations and many of them noncombatants.

 _Ignore them_ was his instinctive reaction. That was what G-Force always did. But this time they were _their_ noncombatants, and it seemed unlikely that the Spectrans would consider anyone who worked in ISO USA to be an innocent bystander. Not killing them himself wouldn't be good enough. And they had no power and no comms. No way to even tell them to keep the hell out of the way. And barely any functional weapons.

And Mark hadn't given details, but from what he'd said, the Spectrans were going in shooting.

And he'd started to sweat again. He could feel droplets forming under his arms and down his spine.

And his legs ached like crazy. Sitting still wasn't any fun at the moment. Even if it was because he was, finally, growing. Two inches since he'd started on the drug-enhanced hormone treatment. It was probably just as well that transmutation wasn't an option right now - he had no idea what would happen if he tried when he'd changed shape and size this much.

Why hadn't he considered that puberty would suck this badly?

He really needed a new shirt. Better, he needed a cool shower, to drown his hyperactive sweatglands in antiperspirant yet again, and _then_ a new shirt.

"Keyop?" said Mark. He suspected it wasn't the first time.

"Sorry, Commander. Not concentrating."

Grant was looking daggers at him. Anderson's jaw was set. Keyop dug frantically in his subconscious for what had been said last.

Information-gathering about the forcefield. His job. If he couldn't do it, he might as well resign here and now.

"Yes. I'll do that."

"We'll keep them occupied in here." Mark glanced at the clock. "We've got to get them on the back foot before dark. That gives us how long?"

"About two hours," said Grant.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?"

Keyop bit back the sarcastic comment about being far fitter than his commander was. "Yes," he lied.

"Be careful. You're not bullet-proof out of birdstyle. You're also not intimidating."

 _Like I've ever been intimidating_. But birdstyle was, he supposed, even if it only went as far as when a Spectran saw him they'd assume the Condor wasn't far away.

"I'll be careful," he said.

"I still think I should go," Jason said.

"Look me in the eye and tell me you're not fighting a migraine right now, without your implant."

 _He is? Damn, I never noticed that_. But Jason's gaze dropped.

"I need an engineer outside looking at that barrier. G-2, I want you to go take the drugs and then I need you with me. I left a working machinegun in a storeroom downstairs before I realised ours were useless, but we'll have to take more than that off Spectrans. We won't give them time to worry about Keyop."

* * *

 _Don't forget you're not in birdstyle_. Mark had said it again, the last thing he'd said as Keyop climbed out of the second floor window.

Not likely. He felt naked in sweatpants and T shirt. Not as conspicuous as usual, though. Standard military drab green, as worn by the Academy cadets when training. Hopefully if he did get caught he could play the innocent kid.

He must _not_ get caught. Or incapacitated. ISO was cut off from the rest of the universe, the equipment doing it must be out here somewhere, and it was up to him to get that forcefield down. Or, at the very least, to get back to black section with some information on how to do it.

He crouched at the base of the wall and considered his next move. From where he was, relatively hidden in an alcove, there was very little cover visible. The trees didn't start until almost at the forcefield, maybe two hundred yards away.

On the bright side, he couldn't see a single Spectran. Wade had said they were set up in the western parking lot. Keyop trusted the former Hawk about as far as he could throw him, but in this at least he might have been telling the truth.

If he could get out to the treeline, he could take a look at the forcefield close up. Keyop fingered his left wrist nervously. Wearing his bracelet was a risk, even with the borrowed wristwatch strapped over the top. And it was useless at the moment anyway. But if the Spectrans did have some location where electricity worked normally, or if he had a chance to disable the forcefield, he might need it in a hurry.

He considered his route again. The sun, visible only fuzzily through the forcefield, was getting lower. The ground wasn't as flat as it appeared from above. There were shadows out there on the grass. Hollows.

 _You've done this a hundred times dressed in red and yellow,_ he told himself. _You don't keep your brains in your birdstyle. Nor your skills._

There was a route in those patches of shadow. Twenty yards out from the wall, then another ten slightly to the left, then fifteen doglegging back to the right. He made himself relax and absorb the line he'd need to take. Fourteen separate movements, and he'd be in the vegetation at the edge of the trees. Not so bad. He crept forward on all fours and peered round the corner.

Goons over to the west. A lot of them. Several dozen yards away, but there were enough of them that they'd never all be looking in the opposite direction.

 _You can do this_. The sun was getting lower, and while that increased his cover, it also meant that darkness was getting closer. Pitch black, no night vision... if the Spectrans attacked then it would be carnage. On both sides, but he knew full well that Spectran high command wouldn't care about that if they could take out their target.

He told himself firmly that he was the Swallow, he needed to be over there, in the trees, and it was time to go to work. Three deep breaths and head for the first dip in the ground, in a fast leopard crawl. Pause for a moment, make sure he was oriented correctly, and go for the second. And the third, and on. His shirt was soaked through before he'd made it half way, but there was nothing do do but keep going.

Thirteen... fourteen, and finally there was longer vegetation, and real cover. He rolled to behind the tree and stood up slowly, leaning against the trunk, focusing on breathing. Slow, deliberate, get the heart rate down. Not something he normally had to worry about, when his implant was functioning and he could adjust the amount of adrenaline in his system almost without thinking about it.

 _It's not like you've never gone undercover before,_ he told himself. But he'd never done it without transmutation just a word away, and without his implant enhancements right there. He'd thought it would be easier once he started. It really wasn't.

 _Pull yourself together, kid. They're depending on you._

 _And you're in the trees, out of sight. You've done the difficult part._

 _And there's no way they're looking for you, or even in this direction. They'll be watching the building._

 _And you are the only person who can do this. Jason isn't an engineer. Mark isn't an engineer. Not to mention that neither of them is as good at the stealth skills as you are._

 _Go. Now._

He clamped down furiously on the instincts which were screaming at him to stay safe and hidden, and shifted slowly until he could see round the trunk. No bad guys within a hundred yards, and yes, those that he could see were watching the building and the open grassy area.

 _See, I was right._

He picked out his next tree, only three feet away, and slipped silently across to it.

To the next one, and the next one, and now a screen of undergrowth stood between him and the Spectran patrol. Much better.

 _Don't get complacent,_ he told himself, and headed directly for the forcefield, which contacted the ground maybe a dozen yards away and curved back over his head and up in a smooth arc.

The forcefield was a creamy-white smooth wall, to all appearances solid. It presumably hadn't severed anything it intersected, as he could see branches appearing through it. No signs of damage round the contact points, and twenty feet above his head a frantic thrush tried and failed repeatedly to beat her way through. Chicks on the other side, most likely. He hoped it wasn't chicks entombed in the barrier.

 _So, it isn't hot and it isn't charged_. Normally his implant would warn him of any radioactivity. Not happening today. He had no idea what was going on with this electricity-doesn't-work deal. Obviously it did still work at some level or everything more advanced than a plant would be dead, but where the line was drawn...?

How it was being done didn't matter, not right now. Stopping it mattered.

The barrier was cool to the touch, rigid, as smooth as it looked. He'd have said it was moulded plastic except that it couldn't be. Scraping away the bark on a treetrunk showed the flawless white surface continuing inside it. He had no idea what could possibly do this.

But it must be powered from somewhere. They'd already determined that it couldn't be on the axis of the dome, which ran right through ISO's central courtyard and simply did not have a massive Spectran generator sitting on it. The only other logical place was somewhere on its surface.

 _Let's hope it's on the inside, not the outside._ Keyop permitted himself one barely audible sigh and set off, working his way along close to the barrier. It must be a couple of miles round at least, and over on this side of the buildings, it was mostly in the trees. And it was early summer, with the vegetation tall, green and lush. He could flit from tree to tree with a only a minimum of crawling required.

Ten minutes of steady progress saw him past the west end of the main ISO buildings. Over here was where Wade said the Spectrans had set up their base. The greenery was especially thick here; ten feet of luxuriant shrubbery right up to the asphalt of the parking lots. Keyop noted a couple of unofficial paths and avoided them in favour of a flat wriggle route under more solid branches. The last thing he needed was to encounter a goon going for a pee.

He inched forward, wincing inwardly at every tiny rustle. There were animals here which could make at least that much noise, sure, but would a Spectran guard realise that? Spectra wasn't long on wildlife. And he could hear the guards, despite just how deaf he felt without implant help. Several were just a few feet ahead of him. Probably an officer too, given the lack of chat. He could hear footsteps and breathing, and at least one of them was sweating worse than he was.

He eased himself forward the last couple of inches to the edge of the drop onto the asphalt, parted the leaves a tiny fraction, and squinted out, letting his eyes adjust to the relative brightness. Several ISO officers were going to be extremely pissed. Neither of the Spectran transport craft had worried about finding a free parking space before setting down.

Two troop transports and at least ten alert guards; probably nearer twenty if their distribution was symmetric. But no sounds of generators at all. No cables. No transmitter dishes. He couldn't be sure, but... no, he was sure, as sure as made no difference. The shield wasn't being generated from here. Nor did the Spectrans have some way round its electricity-killing properties. Not a radio in sight, not a light on the control panel visible through the nearest transport's open side hatch - and as he watched, a goon panted round the nose of the transport, gasped out something inaudible to the blue-suited officer seated by the hatch, and then staggered towards the back of the transport and threw up.

 _You need to be fitter_. Well, actually, he preferred it when goons were unfit and incompetent. But it was truly scary how much destruction they could cause as they were. What were they doing this time? Why were they here? Why hadn't they come in and shot the place up? The clues had to be here. They'd brought goons, not Blackbirds. They'd brought people, not assault weapons. It must be a grunt job, but something that lots of people did individually.

He strained his hearing, frustrated beyond belief. The officer was talking to a group of goons, right here, right now, he must be telling them what to do... and Keyop couldn't hear a word.

And then the officer reached inside the hatch and pulled something out to show them, and Keyop's heart stopped. It was a five inch diameter cylinder, four inches tall, black and white in alternate quadrants. Even without the obvious detonator on the top, he'd have recognised it as an explosive charge.

A frustratingly inaudible set of instructions, and he handed the charge to one of the goons, who unslung a long cylindrical tube from his back, inserted the charge, and swung it back over his shoulder. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what else was in the tube: another five, maybe six charges.

"Move out!" he shouted, and the squad jogged off in the direction of the ISO building's main doors. Every one had a similar tube slung across his back. Seventy charges, give or take.

And another squad came round the corner of the transport, carrying the same cylinders, and headed inside.

 _They're refilling. They've already deployed seventy charges, and they're back for more._

Black section needed to know about this, urgently. He wriggled back, slowly, carefully, silently, until he was out of sight of the transports, and then set off back round the inside of the dome as fast as he dared.


	4. Chapter 4

_We did it. Our first jump as a team._

Then, _oh man, Jason does that_ so _much better._

Rick pushed the nausea way down. His G-Force days were over. Force Two was his team now, and they were alone in hostile territory.

"Sound off," he called.

Three shaky replies. Paula sounded as if she'd just had a good night's sleep and her favourite breakfast. Some people had all the luck.

 _Come on, Rick. Focus. You're in command now._

"G-9, report to Control. G-7, tell me what's going on."

"We are alone," Dimitri said solemnly.

 _We're too late._ He hadn't expected this. He'd expected a Spectran mecha. Geostationary above the colony, the distress call had said, though Intelligence had suggested that it was more likely that it was in a lower orbit, actively maintaining its position. The colonists had been stalling, telling the Spectrans that it would take time to get the goods they were demanding together. He'd followed protocol and not contacted the colony in case the signal was intercepted, but had the Spectrans got bored and blown the colony away? Had they figured out something was up? Had they intercepted the initial distress signal? Were they even now in the shadow of the planet preparing an ambush?

And what was keeping his comm-tech?

"G-9, is there a problem?"

"I can't raise Control."

Now that made no sense at all. Not that he had time to worry about it. There was no Spectran mecha here about to rain down fire on the civilians so radio silence had no further use. "Call the planet. Find out what happened."

 _Paula_ lacking in the ability to do her job? She'd been Anderson's comm-tech for longer than he'd been in birdstyle, manning the jump-comm in Control for G-Force's missions, and was the only one of his crew who _wasn't_ working at this level for the first time. It must be equipment failure. He'd thought they were ready. He hadn't imagined for a moment that they wouldn't even be able to _see_ the enemy.

"Keep scanning, G-7."

"Sensors at maximum," Dimitri said. Calm, steady, certain, if a little confused. "There is no trace of recent activity."

"There's got to be." _Two sets of equipment failure? In unrelated equipment? Without a single red light?_

"No, Commander." Dimitri didn't say _I can do my job_ , but he had to be thinking it. And Rick knew he was competent.

A very nasty thought crossed his mind. "G-8? Tell me it's the right planet." No time to consider hurt feelings. He needed to know what the heck was going on here.

"Screen three," said Dimitri. "Ship movements over the past three days. Normalised to planetary motion."

Screen three was directly over his head, and the trails looked like a couple of ships on standard smooth approach trajectories coming in, orbiting, and leaving a day or so later, and one which had done a high altitude flyby and never established orbit at all. Nothing like what he'd been expecting based on the reports of a destroyed cargo ship, scattered planetary defense craft, and a giant enemy mecha. There wasn't any debris. You couldn't blow away a cargo ship without leaving debris.

"G-8?"

Dylan looked across at him, bemusement on his face. "Yes, Commander. It's the right planet."

Rick stood up for a closer look. It didn't help.

"Okay. Somebody show me the recent mecha trail and the missile fire, because I'm not seeing it."

Dylan glanced at him again, stood up alongside him, squinted at the screen. "There isn't any."

And Paula finally started talking into the radio. Calm, professional, identifying them as Galaxy Security ship Garuda, responding to the distress call.

A long pause. Then, "Code seventeen, please."

Another pause, and she looked up. "Commander, they didn't call for help - their jump-comm is down and has been since yesterday, they think it was a meteor strike."

Rick considered screen three again. "Tell them not to worry, G-9," he said. "We'll see that Galaxy Security knows about it." That was for later.

"Meteor strike, G-7?" he asked.

In reply, Dimitri brought up an image of the colony's unmanned comms satellite, high up in geostationary orbit and not so very far from them. No, that wasn't a meteor strike. That was a series of deliberate, clinical laser burns, an inch or so wide, deep into the solar panel, the transmitter dish, and the main body of the satellite. Down since yesterday? They'd been set up. That flyby, if he had to guess.

Who else could they contact right now? He really, desperately needed to ask someone what to do.

 _You don't get to do that. You're in command. You're out of contact with Base Control. There isn't anyone else who can tell you what to do._ Well, not apart from Mark.

"Paula, can you contact the Phoenix?"

She frowned. "Not when it's in the hangar."

"I know that."

"Oh... okay." She went back to the jump-comm, but didn't start talking.

So much for that idea, then. And now she was looking at him expectantly again. He'd been an active commander for a little under two hours and it already sucked. What should he do?

What would Mark do? Forget that - he had zero experience as Mark's subordinate outside of Team Seven, he'd never guess right. What would Jason do?

He'd figure out what the cause of the problem was and go hit it.

"Paula, do you know if your jump-comm is functioning?"

"I think so."

"Can you confirm it?"

"Well... I could call Rigan control. We're not supposed to except in an emergency, but..."

"Do it. Then apologise for the mistake."

There was a nervous giggle from Jenny, and he appreciated why. Rigan high command were uncomfortable enough with birdstyle operatives his age. They'd all been advised that, should they have to deal with Rigan officialdom, their youngest member should stay out of sight if possible. He really, really did not want to have to ask the Red Rangers for help on his first mission in command.

And Paula was speaking Rigan - calm, polite, and what he assumed was the jump-comm equivalent of "sorry, wrong number." There was nothing wrong with their equipment.

That gave him all the answers he was going to get here. If he was wrong, he'd be the laughing-stock of ISO - but he didn't think he was wrong.

"We're going back," he said. "Prepare for jump. How long do you need?"

"Ready when you are," said Dylan.

"Me too." Jenny sounded terrified, and Rick swung round in his seat and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

"If you need longer, say so. This isn't a drill. I suspect something's happened at ISO, and it's too much of a coincidence that it's happened with us out. Which means they wanted us out. Which means we should get back."

"But they must guess that we'd realise," said Dimitri slowly. "Rick... what if they're waiting for us? What if they don't even know it's us they decoyed away, and they're waiting for the Phoenix?"

 _Oh, crap_. That could easily be right. And an ambush set up for G-Force and the Phoenix... his untried crew wouldn't stand a chance.

But what else could they do? Oh, to be sitting at the bottom of the command chain right now.

"I'll take suggestions," he said.

"If you think they're waiting in ambush, we could go for one of the secondaries instead?" Jenny suggested.

"Secondaries?"

"Yes, the other jump-points in Earth orbit, the ones we don't normally use."

He hadn't known there was more than one. G-Force had only ever used one, while he'd been a part of them. Unless he'd been half asleep at the time, they'd never mentioned there being more than one, either - though it wasn't like they'd have discussed it with him. _This is what team-mates are supposed to be for_ , he told himself, fighting back the wave of _what else don't I know that I should?_

"Can you plot a solution to one?" He turned to Dylan. "Do you know about this? It's more than just theory, right?"

"Heck yes. We've practiced it plenty of times in the simulator. Never thought it would be the first Earth-bound jump I made, though."

"Let's do it. Get ready." Sure, they'd said they were ready now, but a couple of extra minutes couldn't hurt, and besides, he needed to talk to his gunner. And to have an excuse to stretch his legs. Leaving Dylan doing whatever it was jump-pilots did to prepare, he headed round to the second row of seats.

"'Mitri, you need to be ready for..." For what? He wasn't even sure. "We need to be loaded."

Dimitri nodded, serious-faced, and activated the weapons controls. One in the Super launcher, one each in the wing mounts. "Armed?" he asked.

No matter how serious the situation, he'd never seen Jason go into jump with weapons hot. "No. But when we come out, don't wait for orders. If there's something there, arm and target. Same for you, G-9 - as soon as we exit jump, get on the radio and try to figure out what the hell's going on."

 _It'll be okay_ , he told himself. _It'll be a malfunction, maybe sabotage of the relay station like this one. Annoying but harmless. G-Force and the ISO teams will have dealt with it before we even get back. Overreacting is the right thing to do, but it won't be necessary._

Back in his seat, and set up for his own part in this. Nobody in their right mind would ask someone to combine the roles of pilot and jump-pilot, so Garuda was his ship for the next while. Engines hot, everything responding as expected, the jump-point coordinates flashing on his screen.

"Ready when you are," said Dylan.

He could see Jenny's numbers in the corner of his screen, so he knew she was ready. "Coming round," he said, doing just that. All he needed was to hit the jump-point smoothly and they'd do everything else. Easy. His job would start again when they came out of jump.

Lined up, engines cut, going inert, green lights across the board. Perfect. Rick leant back in his chair as the flames of jump rose all around him, and tried to relax into it. One step at a time. First, get through jump. What was waiting for them on the other side? He'd worry about that when they got there.

* * *

The sun was noticeably lower by the time Keyop got back to the tree with the thrush, who was now sitting pathetic and dejected on the branch. The shadows were longer, the hollows more protected from sight. Still, the walls of ISO looked a very long way away.

 _You don't have time to hesitate_. They'd never find explosives in the dark. He slipped out of the complete cover near the barrier, moving tree to tree, trying not to think about just how many Spectran patrols he could see now. Multiple. And close. And he couldn't wait for them to move.

He flattened himself to the ground and went for it. If he'd been in birdstyle, if his implant had been active, he would have known if he was below line-of-sight. This was guess and hope and go for it anyway because he simply had no choice.

And, much to his surprise, he reached the alcove without hearing shouts and bullets. Stood up, trembling with relief... and then heard voices. Spectran. Of course. Only a few yards away - how could they have missed seeing him? - and discussing going for a pee. And of course Mr Limited Bladder Capacity would head for the only minimal bit of privacy around.

Nowhere to hide. Keyop flattened himself against the wall. The goon would come round the corner looking at least partly in the other direction. He hoped. No implant strength or speed, but he still had all his skill.

And of course the goon was built like Tiny on steroids, and of course he looked all round the alcove as soon as he turned the corner. Keyop spun into a head kick, knowing he had no chance of taking him down before he'd at least alerted his friend. He tried anyway.

A dark shadow plummeted from the window above, landing directly behind his target. One blow to the base of the skull and the goon crumpled to the floor.

 _Blindfold_ , Jason signed one-handed, pulling out his cablegun to immobilise the goon, and Keyop forced himself past his shock to start acting rather than reacting. It was very convenient of Spectran goons to provide their own blindfolds, in the form of an easily reversible headdress.

"Hey, Caril? What's going on round there?"

Jason's eyes met his in an unspoken _oh crap_ moment, as an emergency ladder unfolded from the windowledge above. Metal rungs, just barely wide enough for one foot at a time, joined by a narrow steel cable. There were two heads up there, worried expressions. Members of Grant's security team, Keyop thought. Right now, completely useless. Far too many Spectrans who would hear shooting and be on top of them in seconds. Oh, for birdstyle and implant enhancements. Normally they could have thrown their prisoner up there and jumped up after him.

"Caril? You okay?"

Jason glanced at the goon, at the ladder, and it was obvious what his intentions were. And a darn good idea, in Keyop's opinion. He hurried to help the Condor swing the giant Spectran into a fireman's lift, and then steadied the base of the ladder as Jason began to climb. How far away had that voice been? A dozen yards? Not much more. Jason only had ten feet to go, but vertically upwards.

 _If he comes round the corner shooting, I'm dead_. He couldn't even hear footsteps without a working implant. Surely the goon should be here by now? Had he realised something was seriously wrong? And how long could it take Jason to go up twenty rungs of ladder, even laden with semiconscious goon?

Spectran green came round the corner, gun barrel first, and stared at Keyop in disbelief.

"Don't shoot!" he babbled. "Please! I'm only twelve. I shouldn't be here at all. I'm on a school enhancement experience, and I lost the rest of my group, and I'm scared, and I want to go home!"

"Hands up!" barked the Spectran in heavily accented English.

"Um..." That was the last thing he wanted to do. Both hands were behind his back, holding the ladder as steady as he could. "I can't. Your friend tied my hands."

Not the brightest of goons. He frowned, probably trying to figure out how on earth Caril had tied up even a scrawny kid in complete silence and then vanished. Then his gaze went upwards, to the point where he couldn't possibly fail to see the ladder and the open window. The gun barrel swung up.

He fell silently, a shuriken in the hollow of his throat.

Keyop looked up. The two guards were hauling their Spectran captive through the window. Just below the sill, Jason hung from the ladder with one hand. _Come up_ , he signed with the other one, and followed the goon in through the window.

Knees weak with relief, Keyop did just that.


	5. Chapter 5

This jump wasn't quite as good as the first one. Definitely more of a wobble to it, or at least that was how Rick's brain interpreted it. He knew they weren't really wobbling through jump-space. Knew, too, that it was unreasonable to expect his novice jump-personnel to put two good jumps together inside less than an hour.

Still, he'd have liked to come out of jump-space alert and ready to fight, rather than trying not to throw up.

Red faded around him, and Rick stamped on the remnants of nausea and forced himself to focus on the viewscreen. Definitely Earth. Not a smoking ruin, at least not on a planetary scale. No proximity alarms. No visible Spectran ships. Dylan had taken the pilot's controls back, Dimitri had armed the weapons and was now running scans, and Paula was talking on the radio.

Talking, and listening, but he'd been on enough missions with G-Force to know what the conversation sounded like when you came out of jump and had access to standard radio again, and this wasn't it. _Uh-oh_.

He flipped his screen to show Dimitri's scans. Nothing odd, at least not at first glance. Or second. Some nasty storms over the Caribbean, but they'd been there this morning too. No mechas. Standard civilian air traffic. Standard military patrols and training flights. If anything big was going down, it was on the opposite side of the planet to the US, thousands of miles from the communications centre which should be talking to them.

"ISO's still not responding on our reserved frequency," Paula said. "All other radio chatter sounds normal."

 _Surely, surely they're not testing us? Are they?_ He liked that idea better than the alternative.

"Does code seventeen work for our own people?" he asked

"There's an equivalent."

"Use it. Everyone else, stay sharp." He was reasonably sure that Jenny wasn't currently awake, but her vitals were normal enough that she could be left to wake up in her own time. Poor kid. She was still a new implantee, and your first few jumps weren't much fun even with a well integrated implant.

Paula launched into a spiel about being an ISO Europe test pilot with a malfunction and needing advice. Rick determinedly stopped listening to her. He was _not_ going to second guess his crew. He was going to let them do their jobs. He might be a worse commander than Jason in every other respect, but this one mattered to him personally. He _would_ be a commander who didn't micromanage.

Dylan had them in a powered holding pattern, one he could break in a hurry if he needed to. Dimitri was running scans for things he didn't even recognise. Rick wound the resolution right up on his screen and zoomed in on the area around ISO. Maybe he'd see if anything odd was going on, even if it was a fleet of fire engines, or a police cordon around the site, or ten hovering helicopters. But no, good old-fashioned eyeballing didn't have any better results than Dimitri's all-frequency scans. It was Sunday afternoon peaceful. No flights in the vicinity; barely a vehicle going past.

"Commander," said Paula, "we have a problem. It sounds like ISO radio chatter, but I'm not getting a valid response to the emergency phrases. It's all being taken at face value."

"Could something serious have happened, so comms have been rerouted somewhere that doesn't know the phrases?"

"They're broadcasting on the main ISO carrier. Reroutes should have a reroute tag. This doesn't. I don't know how, but it's someone else pretending to be our comms."

"Tell me we have an emergency 'stop playing games' codephrase."

"We do. I used it. I used G-Force's too, just in case someone screwed up and ours aren't on the main lists yet. Whoever's running those comms doesn't know our emergency protocols. It's... it's someone else on the other end of that radio. Not ISO. Not even under duress."

"All of it? Or just ISO USA?"

"I can't tell. I've used everything I know."

 _Oh, crap_. He didn't want to believe her, but they'd hit the point where this couldn't possibly be a test. They needed to get down there and see what was going on. Preferably without being seen.

"Listen up," he said, and stopped at a groan from the seats behind him. His jump-calculator was awake again. "You with us, G-10?"

There was an unhappy gulp. "Yes. Sorry, Commander."

"Don't apologise, it's not your fault. What you've missed is that ISO comms is being spoofed. Now I'd like you to review the last few minutes of scan data in case you spot anything odd with it. We're going down to take a look. Conservative approach, G-8."

"Five klicks enough?"

"I think so." The standard water entry point was just a few hundred yards offshore, completely obvious to anyone paying any attention at all. Five kilometres out would still be visible, if anyone was watching closely, but much further than that and they'd be underwater for minutes. Plenty of time for someone to set an ambush. Five was the recommended distance, and was what Jason had used the one time they'd run a simulation even slightly related to this. "Yes. Five. Let's go. Standard re-entry protocol."

Dylan swung them round smoothly and headed to break orbit, and Rick leaned back in his chair, willing his heartrate to slow. Calm focus, that was what a commander needed. He'd have found it a whole lot easier if he had any idea at all what was going on.

There was no possible way to do atmospheric re-entry without being seen, and it would be insane to drop through the air traffic routes of the western Atlantic without announcing their presence. Paula was back on the radio, this time being honest about who they were, requesting clear airspace through to ISO. They wouldn't quite be on the standard approach for the last few kilometres, but there were no commercial flightpaths there. Any ISO planes would just have to get out of the way. He had a strong suspicion that there wouldn't be any.

They dropped through the atmosphere about as smoothly as it was possible to do so. The weather was perfect - light winds at all altitudes, good visibility. It should have been wonderful, a successful return home from their very first mission. Instead he had no idea what they expected to find. Based on what Paula had said, it couldn't possibly just be a massive malfunction of the comms system. ISO would have found another way to communicate with them by now, and if for some reason they'd had to ask for help from another organisation, whoever it was would be announcing no protocol to avoid misunderstandings.

So it hadn't happened. So he was taking his team into the unknown.

He didn't know what to do. His only comfort was that he was pretty darn sure Jason wouldn't know what to do either.

* * *

Jenny sat in her chair and felt useless. Passing out in jump? She'd been warned that it might happen. Hadn't expected it, to, though, Especially not after she'd been fine through the first jump they'd made. She rather thought that meant her numbers hadn't been much good second time round.

Worse, if anything, was that it hadn't mattered. At all. They'd simply carried on without her. If it had been any of the other four unconscious, it would have been a big deal, she was sure of it. Not just something worthy of a one line summary of what she'd missed.

She desperately wanted to be useful to this team in more ways than her one speciality, and the only possible way she could help right now was to do everything she was asked. Scan data. Well over five minutes of it, already analyzed using the best software there was by adult experts who'd been training for this for years. But she didn't do computer analysis. She did pattern recognition. Equation solving. The things that the computers couldn't do.

She flicked past the numerical data and pulled up the photos. Rick had said that ISO comms were being spoofed, and he'd been looking at photos of ISO. He hadn't seen anything. But had he thought that the pictures might somehow be spoofed too, and if so, could she see signs of it?

She couldn't see anything odd at all, and a glance at the main viewscreen showed they were almost at the point of water entry, and -

 _That's wrong. That shouldn't be there._

She'd shouted "abort!" before she'd even processed what she was seeing. Garuda slammed into a hard climbing turn, left and up, probably before Dylan had processed what he was hearing.

They levelled out, and Jenny sat in her seat and gasped, wondering how many g that had been. Significantly more than the centrifuge, she thought.

"G-10, what's the problem?" That was Rick, his voice calm and controlled in that way which she knew meant he was making an effort not to lose his temper. There weren't too many candidates for who that temper would be aimed at.

She gulped, staring at the completely normal viewscreen showing a completely normal view of ocean. What _was_ the problem? She wasn't even sure.

"There was something on the main screen. Something that... something spoofed. I think."

"Bring us round, G-8," Rick said. "Nice and slow."

Garuda began to turn on the spot, and Jenny tried to gather her scattered wits. What had she seen? Some sort of visual effect, centred on ISO. Beyond that, she really wasn't sure. Wasn't even sure how she'd recognised it, or whether she'd recognise it again, or even if it had been there at all.

The distant shore came into line of sight, the city, the cliffs, and there it was again. Jenny almost sobbed with relief. Almost. She had a job to do. She'd howl later.

"There. Right there."

"I don't see anything," Paula said.

Jenny headed for the front of the flight deck, between the two pilots' seats, reached over and up as far as she could and traced the line of wrongness in the image. "There. It's there. A... a discontinuity, I guess. It shouldn't be there." She glanced to her right. Her commander's face was impassive.

"There really is something." Her voice wavered despite her attempts to sound professional.

"Give me a minute," said Dimitri from his seat. "I think I can..." He fiddled with the settings at his console, muttering to himself in Russian. It took nearer three minutes before he flicked a switch and the main viewscreen changed from the front camera view to what Jenny assumed was an earlier image, from their descent from orbit.

"It is low resolution, I'm afraid, but this might be useful." He set the viewscreen running.

It was blocky, maybe five frames a second, but it unmistakeably showed a dome-shaped artifact over ISO, following the line she'd traced, up and over the treetops and down on the far side of the complex, somewhere near the runway. She could have wept with relief.

It came to an end and froze on the final image, and Rick swore. "Two questions. What is that thing and how come nobody's noticed it?"

"If you mean the people on the ground," Paula said, "I can answer the second. There's some minor grumbling from delivery drivers who've been turned round at the main gate due to a security lockdown. Not many. It's Sunday afternoon, tomorrow's a holiday. You wouldn't expect many."

"So comms have been spoofed and the main gate infiltrated. That means an inside job." Rick visibly swallowed. "That means we can't trust anyone, not unless we absolutely have to."

"It's a forcefield," Dimitri said. "It cannot be anything else. What I have here is a line of discontinuity in the digital images. I think that the image projected on the dome is is itself digital, and there is some interference with our own digital systems, I think a phase difference."

"A spherical forcefield centred on ISO. With some sort of image projection of what we should be seeing onto the surface. That would block transmissions, would it? Including jump-comm? No, don't worry about that. We know it does. Save how for later. The generator has to be in the centre." Rick sighed. "I don't dare ram it. We're going to have to land and take a look. Low level route in, out of sight of the main gate all the way, land behind the trees to the south. I don't like this at all. We have to assume it's a hostage situation and even if they don't see us coming they're going to hear us."

"Only logical place to generate a spherical field from is the centre," said Dylan. "But that makes no sense. Say they lured us away with a fake distress call. They thought the Phoenix would go out. But it _didn't._ G-Force aren't at full strength but the Eagle and the Condor are in there; they should have dealt with it hours ago. You don't think...?"

"I think it's a good point that the people in there aren't exactly incompetent. They should have been able to take it down."

 _There's something wrong here_. Jenny searched for the logical fallacy her subconscious was insisting existed, and found it.

"It's not a spherical field," she said.

"Hemispherical, whatever." Dylan was dismissive.

"No, not that either." She stared at the screen. _Don't try to work it out_ , Jason had said. _Just see the answer_. He'd been talking about jump-equations, not forcefield distortions, but still...

She blinked, took a steadying breath, and she saw the answer.

"It's hyperbolic."

"And what...?" Dylan caught himself. "I'm an idiot. Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"You're brilliant."

"This is all very nice," Rick almost snapped, "but why would they bother? Much easier to generate spherical."

Dylan glanced back at her, a broad grin on his face. "You tell him, Jen."

"A sphere only has one centre," she said. "One focus. A hyperbola has two. One inside and one -"

"Outside." Rick looked at her, looked at the screen. Back at her. "Good work. Find me the other focus. And... the other forcefield?"

She hadn't considered that, but yes, logically there would be one. And given the shape of the dome, she could calculate it. But getting a three-dimensional equation from a flat image, or even Dimitri's rough animation... and what coordinate system did she use...?

"Jen," said Dimitri, "I have a model here, if you can set the parameters."

She could have kissed him. And absolutely she could set the parameters. Compared to what she had to do for jump-calculations, this was easy. Two minutes of leaning over his shoulder, making corrections, and they had everything lined up neatly. The focus inside this forcefield was deep underground. The second one was up in high orbit with the forcefield between it and the planet. All very symmetrical. All very clever, assuming they were right.

"Where's the top of the atmosphere?" said Rick from alongside her and she jumped a mile. She hadn't even realised he was there.

Dimitri made some adjustments, adding another circle to the image on his screen. "The upper forcefield does not touch it."

"And the altitude of the second focus, if this is right?"

"Very similar to Comsat Three."

"That can't be a coincidence." He blinked. "Paula, tell me it isn't _on_ Comsat Three."

"It isn't on Comsat Three. They're on the other side of the planet right now."

"It cannot be on a satellite at all," said Dimitri. "It is not in a stable orbit - it is far too low to be geostationary."

"It's on a mecha." That was Dylan.


	6. Chapter 6

_On a mecha._ That changed things. That put everything back in the realms of stuff he'd been trained for. Rick knew how to take out mechas, and, thank goodness, it didn't involve landing and trying to figure out how to get through a forcefield on foot.

He strode back to his console, vaguely aware that he was smiling. "Prepare for orbital boost. G-8, we're going to need to jump in behind the mecha - can we do that?"

Dylan checked something. "Lunar Lagrangian, and cut it short? It's the right direction. How accurate do you need it to be?"

"Provided we end up inside that hyperbolic curve, not accurate at all. Why do we have to cut it short?"

"Lunar orbit's a long way out. We only want to go a tenth of that, or even less, and there aren't any jump-points where we need one. The only way I know to do that is to make a longer jump in the right direction and kill the jump-drive early."

"Wait," said Paula, "we're going to jump through the forcefield? How do we know that will work?"

"We already did it," Rick said. "Tell me if I'm wrong."

"You're not wrong," said Jenny. "We were pretty close to the mecha on the jump home, actually. We went through the forcefield twice, both sides of the curve. I... I wish I hadn't thought about that." Her voice shook.

"It's done. Compartmentalise."

"Yes, Commander."

He could hear her using their standard relaxation breathing techniques. She was doing fine. Probably because she had no idea just how far from a standard mission this mess was. He'd never flown a mission involving more than two jumps. He knew it was possible to cut a jump short, but he'd never been on a ship doing it.

He could tell Dylan as much, but then they'd still have to do it, with their jump-pilot thoroughly unnerved. No, he'd discuss something else with him. No matter how good their information was, how sure he was that there was a mecha up there and it was his job to take it out, he couldn't leave ISO USA like this, a sitting duck target. But with the main gate compromised, there was no way he was going to assume that the skeleton flight crew on the other side of the base was to be trusted.

"G-8," he said, "the other local ISO facilities. How many of them have airfields?"

Dylan half turned, visibly thinking. "The orbital launch site's probably the closest."

"With fighters. Someone we can put on patrol here while we go investigate Jen's other focus."

"Oh. Parker's closest, they may have something... no, wait, Armstrong-Tracy. They have Z-17s. Nykinnen's trying to get me some experience there, since I won't be getting it with Team Three any time soon."

"That'll do." Rick turned in his seat to face his comm-tech. "G-9, I need an encrypted radio link with Armstrong-Tracy. I need it to not go anywhere near that compromised ISO network. Voice only and if it's a poor connection, that would be ideal."

"On it." Not a hint of uncertainty in her voice. Rick only wished he felt as confident. Too late now. He was committed, and as she nodded, he took a deep breath, opened the comms channel from his console, and tried to remember everything he'd ever been told about voice impersonation.

"Armstrong-Tracy, this is Galaxy Security Actual. I need your standby pilots in the air _now_ under my command. Acknowledge and go silent."

A long pause. They'd be confirming that the codes running alongside the voice transmission were indeed today's, and, he hoped, doing what he wanted without stopping to consider who Galaxy Security Actual was - or wasn't - right now. He did not want them second-guessing anything, discussing it over the airwaves, or contacting ISO itself for confirmation of a bizarre order from a brand new commander.

"Acknowledged." And the line went dead.

So far, so good. "G-7, tell me when they're in the air."

"One taxiing now," said Dimitri. "One still... no, firing engines. Screen three."

"G-9, I want an open Z-17 air-to-air channel. Not too clear."

"Yes, Commander."

The light flashed on his console seconds later. All ready, just as soon as Armstrong-Tracy's pilots got their act together. How long were they going to take? As scrambles went, this one was decidedly unimpressive. But the first plane was, finally, accelerating down the runway, and the second followed in short order, soaring into the sky and swinging onto a standard holding pattern over the base. He gave them another minute to sort themselves out, and then opened the channel.

"Armstrong-Tracy Z-17s, Galaxy Security Actual. You'll be flying deep surveillance patrol centred on ISO USA until countermanded by me. Codeword is _Foothold_. Report to me only."

"Foothold protocol confirmed," crackled back over the radio, and the line went dead. Nothing from the second pilot, but on a quiet Sunday afternoon it was highly likely that he was a trainee who didn't know Foothold protocol - the set of instructions you followed when you believed that your command structure was compromised - from a hole in the wall. The lead pilot knew, and that was good enough.

"Foothold?" said Dimitri. "Do you think so?"

"I'm guessing what's going on inside that forcefield and I hope I'm wrong. But even if I am, it gets those planes doing what I need them to do without lengthy explanations." On the screen, the two Z-17s had broken off from their holding pattern and were heading towards the coast some way south of them, standard double aircraft patrol formation. Not too close to ISO itself, nothing to draw attention, but close enough to notice if anything odd happened. If they did report something... well, he couldn't worry about that now. It could be _anything_. He had enough to worry about with the theoretical focus point in high orbit above them. If it wasn't there, he had no idea what he'd do next. And having no idea meant it wasn't worth worrying about until it became relevant.

"Sound off," he said, and listened to his crew doing something standard, that they'd practiced, that had an expected outcome, that he understood. Maybe fate would even things out and their next ten missions would be easy. For now, he'd just keep on doing his best with what fate had given them this time.

They finished preparations, and he leaned back in his seat. "G-8, take us up."

* * *

 _He's blindfolded. He can't see you're wearing jeans and a T-Shirt, and it makes no difference that you couldn't go through jump right now._ As the goon stirred and groaned, Jason took a deep breath and told himself that it was time to be the Condor.

"Put him in that chair," he ordered. Quiet menace had always been his technique - that plus the generic American accent he always used in birdstyle would identify him to even the dimmest goon, surely.

One of Grant's men looked beyond startled. The other moved to do as he was told, with a sharp "yes, sir!" The goon was dumped unceremoniously on a chair, and Jason contemplated what he needed to ask. He hadn't a clue. Keyop might know, though.

"Move and I'll break your neck," he said. "Tell me what I want to hear and I may let you live. Think about that."

 _Watch him_ , he signed to the two guards, and _Follow_ to Keyop, and headed out of the room and round the corner, to a point where they were definitely beyond goon earshot.

"What's going on?"

Keyop looked up at him - not as steeply as it had once been, Jason realised. The kid was growing fast. "Everyone needs to hear this."

"Fine." He raised his voice, Condor accent. "Senior staff, briefing room one, _now_." Not that any of the people he needed would have heard him, but the security staff were already moving to pass the message on.

"You okay?" he asked Keyop as they headed there.

"Yes, now."

That was all he said, and Jason didn't want to push him. Sending an unaugmented seventeen year old out against multiple squads of goons had been a lousy idea, even if it had been the only option. Keyop had always had absolute faith in his implants, his teammates and his birdstyle, possibly not in that order, and he'd had to go out there without any of them. Not only that, he'd been caught and he'd looked down the barrel of a gun and seen his own death.

"A school enhancement experience?" he asked.

"I figured looking twelve has to be good for something."

"You might need to start using fourteen."

Keyop grinned, even if it was half-hearted. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."


	7. Chapter 7

The acceleration died away, Rick called for the usual orbital system checks, and he was well into his own before he realised that the set of lights corresponding to his pilot hadn't started to change. He glanced sideways. Dylan's eyes were closed, his face pale.

"G-8, talk to me," he said.

The eyes opened. "I'm okay, Commander. Just..."

"It's been a long day. Get some glucose in you and rest for five minutes. I'll handle this."

"Sorry."

"Don't apologise. Just tell me earlier next time. I'm perfectly capable of piloting an orbital boost." He didn't need to say that he wasn't capable of making a jump. They all knew that - knew, too, that ISO were desperately trying to find a way to give them an emergency option for jump-pilot, and had so far come up with nothing.

He raised his voice. "I need honesty here. How are the rest of you coping? I'll start. I'm shattered but functioning."

"I think I have had less to do than you, so far," Dimitri said. "If I can help more..."

"Same," said Paula.

A long pause from their jump-calculator, and Rick's chest contracted in sympathy. He'd been there, been the newbie on the team, the one without the same degree of physical fitness, the one working at a less instinctive level, the one with the new, less well integrated implant. The jumps had been miserable and the anticipation almost worse. And he'd been at a far higher level of fitness and training than she was.

"Jen, you've got to be in hell right now. I know that. Now, honesty. Can you calculate us one more jump? We can cover you for everything else."

"Yes. Yes, I can." She sounded beyond rough, but as if she believed it. That would have to do.

"Same for you. Glucose and five minutes rest. Dimitri...?"

"I will do your system checks, Jen," his second said, "but maybe not the glucose, this close to jump."

 _Something he knows and I don't. Not discussing it now._

He had two sets of checks to do, Dimitri had two, and if five minutes was going to be critical he'd blown it the moment he'd made the decision to go for re-entry instead of staying in orbit after they'd jumped back. Rick took his checks at a careful pace, not breakneck emergency. All green, and the other lights on the board were turning green steadily too. They were good to go, and he was suddenly aware that there was a strong urge to prevaricate, to find something else to do here in the safety of low orbit rather than go mecha-hunting on the other side of their third jump of the day.

"Moving out," he said, and did it. Steady acceleration, no more than two g, just a few minutes to the jump-point on his screen. He glanced to his left again. Dylan was a bit less pale, he thought. That would have to be good enough.

A minute to the jump-point, and the indicators for Jenny's board came to life even before he'd opened his mouth. Rick forced himself to focus on the numbers she was producing. Not that he was much of a mathematician, but he knew how to spot the horrors, extreme values, sudden changes in sign. All things which the computer could catch anyway, but a second check was never a bad thing. They looked fine to him.

"Thirty seconds to jump," he said. "Going inertial." Hands off the controls and pass responsibility to the young man to his left, now sitting forward with a calm focus, eyes intent on the numbers on the screen, doing whatever it was jump-pilots did to interface with the drive.

"We need to drop out of jump after three seconds," said Dylan. "I'll do it, but you should know, in case..."

 _In case you're not fit to do it_. Rick did his best to look reassuring. Force Two's current emergency option for a jump-pilot was 'call home, we'll send G-Force to get you'. If Dylan did pass out going into jump, then Rick had the emergency kill switch. He'd count to three and pull it. And then he'd take over as Garuda's main combat pilot, and they'd go blow the mecha to bits.

He hoped Dylan didn't pass out. He hoped _he_ didn't pass out.

"Ready to jump?" he asked.

"Ready."

In a couple of minutes he'd be back having to make all the decisions, to act instead of react, to be responsible for everyone's actions as well as his own. But for now, just briefly, all he had to do was line Garuda up with the coordinates on his screen and let his jump-team do the difficult work.

"Three," said Dylan. "Two. One."

Perfect timing, perfect course, coming in inert just as they were supposed to. Rick reached for the kill switch.

"Jump!"

And there were flames, and pain, and nausea, a lot worse than the last time, and Rick was starkly aware that there was no way he'd be able to do this again. _Don't pass out - don't you dare!_

* * *

"They're planting explosives in the building," Keyop said simply. "Lots and lots of them. Electronic fuses. When the forcefield comes down, they'll all go off at once."

"What sort of damage are we looking at?" Ivanov asked.

"Catastrophic."

Simple understatement, from the Swallow, said more than any overblown hysterics would have. Mark looked round the table, wondering which of the senior staff would have a suggestion. He saw shock, and confusion, and uncertainty, and no answers at all.

 _You're the field commander. This is what_ _ **you**_ _do._

He stood up. "One good thing - this means they expect the forcefield to come down. Electronic, Keyop? Are you sure?"

His engineer looked at the floor. "Couldn't hear much. Probably electronic. They've been seeding the building with them."

"Two questions," Jason said. "What do they look like and how do we disarm them? And how much time do we have?"

Keyop almost cracked a smile. "That's three questions."

"At a time like -" Grant began, and Mark swung round and glared.

"Let my team work, Major. Keyop, can you draw it?"

Keyop wasn't the best artist the world had ever seen, but even he couldn't mess up a drawing of a stubby cylinder, striped black and white, with a basic digital readout panel in the middle of the top surface which couldn't be anything but an electronic timer. They'd all seen these before. The only saving grace was that they were modern explosives. No chain reactions. They wouldn't need to worry about removing them.

"Disarm?" Keyop said. "No electricity, no failsafe. Just pull the detonator off."

"Any parameters on the time?" Mark asked him.

He shook his head.

"It can't be long," Jason said. "Unless they're planning to lay charges by the light of flaming torches, at which point we take a bagful of shuriken each and go take out fish in a barrel. Even Spectran goons aren't that stupid. And we can't clear charges in the dark, either."

Mark went cold. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If you're thinking we need to hurry, then yes."

"Then we've got less than an hour. Keyop, how many?"

"Hundreds."

"Commander," said an unfamiliar voice from behind him, "can I make a suggestion?"

One of Grant's security officers, who shouldn't even have been listening. Which meant he thought what he had to say was important. Mark tried to look reassuring.

"Go on, Captain."

"There's a lot more Spectrans leaving the building than going in. Not many going in at all, I'd say. Not compared to half an hour ago."

"Not many is rather different from none." Grant's tone dripped sarcasm.

"Sorry, sir. It wasn't something I was watching for. We were covering the Swallow."

Mark nodded in acknowledgement. That was what the man had been assigned to do - he and three of his fellow officers, stationed at suitable windows overlooking the lawns between the buildings and the trees, with orders to open the window and start shooting if and only if absolutely necessary. Five rounds of ammunition apiece for their captured Spectran rifles. When this was over, he was personally going to make sure that ISO Headquarters was properly equipped to deal with a situation like this. Low tech weapons available in an armoury which had a manual backup locking system.

"They're afraid of being left behind," Jason said. "Or of the forcefield coming down early and blowing them up along with us. Mark - they're not in the building any more, or hardly any of them. We need to scour the place, rip the detonators off."

"And when the power comes back on?" said Anderson.

"We'll worry about that later," said Mark. He pointed at the security guards, all uniformed. "You and you, upper floors. Anyone you can find, set them to check room by room and use my authority if you need it. Use best judgement as to whether the Spectrans have been in there or not and move on if not - we don't have time to search everywhere. Go. Jase -"

"Nobody bar Team Seven is going to listen to me out of birdstyle."

"You go there and use them to clear the west wing. Keyop, you're with me. Let's hope there's someone else in the east wing to help. Who have I forgotten? We need teams clearing explosives in the north wing and the central area."

"The duty teams are Seven and Four," Grant said. "Academy's on recess - there might be a few students. There's the comms team on the top floor."

 _And they're almost all noncombatants._ He pointed at the remaining uniformed guard. "Team Four gets the north wing, you're acting on my authority. Chief, you need to mobilise anyone else available to deal with the central area. If there are still Spectrans in the building, they'll be near the exits. We'll drive them out of the main entrance and away from you."

"What about the prisoner?" asked Keyop.

For a moment, the words made no sense at all. Mark blinked, trying to focus.

"What prisoner?" said Anderson.

"Keyop nabbed a goon as he came back in," Jason said. From the astonished expression on the Swallow's face, that wasn't exactly what had happened, but there seemed little point in querying it.

"Have you interrogated him?" Grant asked.

"Didn't know what you wanted to ask him. Plus I prefer to do my interrogating in birdstyle. Teen race drivers aren't so intimidating."

"Medical," said Grant. "Black section and standard. They will have people who can't be moved."

Mark froze - of course, this was why Chris Johnson wasn't in this meeting; he was doing his best for Tiny, who probably qualified as someone who couldn't be moved. G-Force didn't do rescue the civilians. They never had the time, or the personnel. How the heck did you evacuate a complete medical facility with no power while under siege? He wanted a working radio, and birdstyle, and the Phoenix, and he had none of them.

"You deploy now," said Anderson. "We'll handle the rest and get any additional information to you. Is there a contingency plan?"

 _You're starting to guess just how often I don't have a plan B, aren't you?_ "Keyop, estimated range on those explosives?"

The kid shook his head.

"Clear the buildings when there's still just about enough light to see, then. Go out of the east doors, head for the cliffs, get over the ridge."

* * *

(thanks guest, typo fixed :) )


	8. Chapter 8

_One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand..._

Rick hit the kill switch as Garuda crashed out of jump. Had he done that, or had Dylan? No time for that. Did he have a functioning crew left?

"Sound off!" he called, trying desperately to make his eyes focus. The flight deck swam around him. It shouldn't be spinning like that. The universe shouldn't be swimming like that...

 _"Commander! He's out. G-7, you need to take over._ "

He heard it distantly, as if he was underwater, as if it was something which didn't apply to him.

 _"Bring us around. Intercept course."_

That was Dimitri, giving orders. Dimitri? What was he doing here? Where was Jason?

 _"This is Galaxy Security warship Garuda. Disengage your forcefield or we fire."_

Garuda? That meant...

The fog cleared from his brain as if someone had wiped it away in one sweep. Rick sat up. "I'm back. Report."

"Mecha right where we expected it," said Dimitri. "It's big. And... firing!"

"Evasive!" Rick snapped, trying to catch up. There it was, on the main screen. Not that big by Spectran mecha standards. Two banks of rocket gatlings, both spitting missiles at them. They weren't what worried him, though.

"Raven, keep dodging," he ordered. "Osprey, my target marker, stand by." On the screen, he targeted that central mass of girders, barely visible, very poorly lit, but he'd seen something like that before, he knew he had. Oh, for Jason's perfect memory... but his subconscious said 'plasma weapon' and they were in no shape to go fiery themselves.

Dylan threw them right and then down, and the first wave of rockets missed, sailing past. The second wave was closing fast, and Rick left his pilot to deal with those, concentrating on the rear-facing viewscreen.

Crap. Homing missiles, not ballistic.

"G-10?" he asked.

"No," said Paula. Not that Rick was surprised. Poor kid was going to feel beyond rough when she woke up.

"G-9. Rear point defense." Jen was a better shot, but Paula wasn't bad.

"On it."

 _And now you leave her to it. She'll tell you if she needs help_. He still activated the chaff, loaded and ready to fire at the push of a single button. She was dealing with chasing missiles at a relatively low closing speed, but the way Dylan was throwing Garuda round the sky, hitting the side of a barn wouldn't have been trivial.

"Osprey?"

"Range is good. I'll need three seconds straight and level to get lock."

The mecha did look a lot closer, and that plasma weapon was starting to glow an ominous orange.

"Hurry, Raven."

Dylan threw them into a full spin to the left. Three missiles just barely missed their starboard wing. "If I stop for half that we'll be hit."

"Chaff's ready. Call it."

"Okay." Another gut-wrenching manouevre. "Ten o-clock forward in three. Two. One. Now."

Rick hit the button, and the mass of silvery strands exploded away from Garuda, up and to the left, expanding into what should be a much bigger, more desirable missile target than their ship. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the incoming missiles veered towards it.

"Steady!" Dylan shouted.

Eight hundred yards off their port bow, there was an almighty explosion as multiple Spectran missiles took out several rolls of tinfoil. The next wave of missiles wavered, and visibly altered course back towards Garuda itself.

"Impact in two," he warned, and at that moment the Super launcher fired. It was unmistakeable, a noticeable chance in momentum even for a ship this size.

"Missile away," Dimitri said unnecessarily.

 _Now let's hope you can shoot straight._ Rick didn't say it, instead watching the giant warhead streak away from them towards its target. And then vanish off the bottom of the screen, as Dylan spun them hard the other way to avoid the next set of missiles.

"Can't keep this up," the pilot gasped.

"Loading chaff," Rick responded, and did it. How many missiles did that mecha carry? Would it stop shooting when the Super hit? _Would_ the Super hit? Would the plasma weapon fire first? He activated his own controls and set his own screen to stay on the mecha, ready to take over if necessary. He'd rather take a hit from five rockets than a plasma burst, but Dylan was far too busy to worry about tactics.

He could see the Super, just, blazing towards its target. If the plasma weapon fired now, it would be mutually assured destruction, he hoped. Dimitri had a second one loaded and ready, but no chance of getting target lock while they were on this sort of evasive pattern. At least missiles were stupid and would fall for chaff just as well a second time as they had the first.

That plasma weapon didn't look ready to fire. This might just work.

It wasn't going to fire.

The Super hit, as close to dead centre as Rick could have asked for. Vanished. For an instant, there was nothing, and then the whole mecha shuddered and simply split, great sections of superstructure cartwheeling away in all directions, and at the centre of the explosion a giant plasma ball, expanding and fading to a dying red glow. Harmless. Beyond it, the flat blackness of the forcefield was replaced with the blue-green marble of Earth, sun off to one side, starfields away from it.

Behind him, Paula swore, and Rick belatedly remembered just how many pursuing missiles she must be dealing with. Chaff wouldn't fire backwards, unfortunately. Something to suggest for the future.

"Bring us round hard, G-8," he ordered. "Chaff going high."

Dylan took him at his word - that was what, a nine g turn? Rick waited until he could see the pack of missiles following them on the main screen, and then punched the button. The silvery strands shot out upwards, their pilot pulled them downwards, and there was a most satisfying series of explosions as missile after missile piled into the dummy target.

"Scan for stragglers," he said as the last explosion died away.

"Screen is clear," Dimitri responded so quickly that he must have been checking it already. "I think we did it."

 _I think we did._ Rick wanted to stand up and cheer. Instead, he said, "Systems check. Stay sharp." He desperately didn't want to make a stupid mistake, not now, not with the mecha in pieces and the forcefield down.

"G-10's still out cold," Paula said.

"You see to her. No, belay that. You contact ISO. I'll see to her. G-8, you have my systems."

He pushed himself to his feet - he was going to hurt tomorrow, they all were - and headed for Jenny's seat. The alarm at his console would have gone nuts if she had a serious medical problem, and the most likely thing was that she was exhausted and in implant recharge, but still... if it had been him, he'd have wanted to be awake.

Yup. Pale and shaky, but asleep, not unconscious. Rick slapped her cheek, gently, as being the only bit of available bare skin. "Come on, Jen. Time to wake up."

She groaned, and shifted, and her eyes opened. Focused slowly. She blushed scarlet. "Commander - I... I'm sorry. What...?"

And Rick finally allowed himself a smile. "We won. We're going home."

"ISO USA's still not responding," Paula said. "But they're not responding at all. The spoof's gone."

He suspected the spoof was in multiple pieces, cartwheeling away from their current position to burn up in the atmosphere at some point. ISO still not responding? Maybe something dreadful had happened inside that dome. Maybe it wasn't over yet.

"G-8, take us back," he ordered. "G-9, keep trying to contact them. G-7, G-10, scanners. I want to know if the ground-based forcefield's gone, as soon as we're close enough to tell."

He made his way back to his seat and dropped into it as Dylan accelerated them back towards a re-entry profile. _Compartmentalise_. Forget the mecha, that was gone. Forget how tired he was. Think about what was happening on the surface, and get ready to make decisions just as soon as he had any new information.


	9. Chapter 9

"Good luck," Jason said as he turned left at the bottom of the stairs.

"I'll see you outside," Mark replied, making sure it was just that little bit pointed. "No heroics."

"Oh, I have no plans to get blown up today." He was gone into the dark, and Mark turned the other way.

Not so dark down this corridor. That would be because the doors on either side were open, all of them. Which meant what?

"Keyop, you take left, I'll take right. Looks like the Spectrans have been in here."

The Swallow nodded, and disappeared through the nearest door. Mark took the one opposite it. Medium office, five desks, probably nine-to-five weekday staff. Certainly no sign of a struggle. So, if he was planting an explosive device, where would he put it? More to the point, if he was training a set of goons, where would he tell them to put it, that they couldn't get wrong?

It was under the desk, looking remarkably like Keyop's drawing. He yanked it off - some sort of glue pad, nothing sophisticated, and examined it quickly. As the kid had said, a basic digital detonator on the top, blank now. Presumably it would come up on zero, and boom.

No electricity; no failsafe. He ripped the detonator off and it came out wires and all. One down.

"Under the desk!" he called.

"Got it!"

The other desks were bare. One per room, then - or a pattern he didn't have time to figure out. He left it on the floor and moved on to the next office, hyper-aware of just how dark it was getting. The sun must be almost below the horizon now.

He almost ran into the entrance doors before he realised that they'd reached the end of the corridor. Keyop was only seconds behind him.

"Where now?"

To the left was the main canteen; to the right, the entrance to ISO Academy. Mark pointed right. "You go that way. I'll do what I can here. Five minutes, then head through the building to the back exit, make sure everyone leaves." There was no sun at all on the parking lots any more - they were completely shadowed by the trees beyond. Even so, two Spectran troop transports were clearly visible. How had they got past the early warning system? Heads would roll for this.

The doors down this corridor were shut. He had to assume that meant that the Spectrans hadn't gone in there. They'd have headed for the canteen, surely? Even on a Sunday afternoon, there would have been people in there, to be neutralised or worse.

He opened the swing doors at the end and raw instinct saved his skull. He hit the floor, rolled, and came up gasping, hands in the air in a good position for a counterattack, though hopefully they wouldn't know that.

"Jarrald, Mark, Lieutenant Commander, Team Seven - _friend_!"

"He doesn't look Spectran," said a dubious voice, from the man who'd been wielding the table leg. Mark could barely see him, but that looked like an ISO chef's uniform.

"He isn't," said a second voice. "Breakfast regular. Commander, what the hell is going on?"

"I'll explain later. Have the Spectrans been in here?"

"Yeah. Came in shooting. We hid in the freezer. They went in all the storerooms, sounded like they took a bunch of food, but didn't bother with the frozen stuff. Came out a few minutes ago to this."

"Any casualties?"

He gulped visibly. "A dozen or so of Team Four, I think. Anna's taking care of them." He pointed to the other end of the canteen.

"Badly hurt?"

"They're all dead. She's making them decent." His voice shook, and Mark finally put a name to the face and voice. Tom, who'd been here longer than Mark had, and who'd carried his breakfast tray to his table for weeks when he'd been a new and incompetent wheelchair user. Anna he thought was a new assistant. He didn't recognise the other man at all, but Sunday afternoon was hardly a prized shift.

Half of Team Four were dead? Two of the security teams were on duty each weekend, on rotation - not guard duty, but being here if something big went down. Team Four and Team Seven, this weekend. It sounded as if they'd been hit first. It sounded as if the Spectrans had known exactly where they'd be, down to the room. This was getting worse and worse.

"Anyone else alive?"

"Just us three. Unless they took prisoners - and where the hell are G-Force when we need them?"

"Off-planet, most likely. Seen any explosive devices? Black and white, round, a bit bigger than a coffee mug?" He crouched down again as he spoke, peering under the tables. Oh joy. _Dozens_ of the things.

He grabbed the nearest, held it up, demonstrated removing the detonator. "We need to clear these fast. You, start that side. Tom start here. Move."

They didn't argue, diving under the tables where he'd indicated, and Mark headed for the kitchen and the storerooms beyond. They'd seeded the canteen far more heavily than anything else he'd seen, and chances were that the other nearby areas were similar.

Indeed. As far as he could see - which was minimal - there was an explosive device in every saucepan. Mark groaned and stripped detonators as fast as he could, counting seconds. He'd give himself two minutes. There was no way he'd clear this lot in that time, but he needed to clear the bulk from the storeroom too. There were ten floors above them here, and it wouldn't matter whether or not the upper floors had been seeded with explosives if there was enough damage at ground level.

Thirty-four. No more visible in the kitchen, and he was heading for the storeroom when there was a shout of "Commander!" from the direction of the canteen. He recognised that voice. What the heck was Don Wade doing down here?

"Report!"

Don staggered into the kitchen door, gasping. "Dome goes down at sunset. Need to evacuate!"

It was sunset. He'd have said it was past sunset.

"We need to go now," he shouted, heading out of the kitchen and to the swing doors. "Follow me - that's an order!"

He could hear multiple sets of footsteps behind him, and heavy breathing, but he didn't stop. "Keyop, _move_!" he yelled at the intersection with the Academy corridor. No response, but he hadn't wanted one. If he'd obeyed orders, Keyop should be long gone.

Back down the main corridor, past the central stairs and the doors to the north wing, through the dark maze in the centre of the building. "Keep going!" he shouted when the breathing behind him turned to desperate gasps. Past Team Seven, past the quartermaster's section of the building, and out through the emergency exit. He hesitated just a moment to let the four behind him catch up. Anna had abandoned her shoes at some point and was running in stocking feet, her uniform skirt hitched up around her waist. The chef, heavy-set and middle-aged, was struggling. Tom was wheezing heavily and not managing much more than a walk. Don... well, to be fair, Don was fitter than he'd given him credit for. Not only that, he'd made it outside voluntarily, undrugged, and without throwing up.

"Over the ridge. Go!" He could see people ahead of him, a couple of silhouettes on the high point - idiots making themselves a target for any Spectran sniper. "Get _down_!" he shouted at them, and they vanished so fast that he surely wasn't the only one shouting. Don accelerated past him, and Anna found new energy and followed him.

The forcefield flickered, and he knew that they weren't going to make it.

"Down!" he shouted, grabbed the slower two, and threw all three of them into a marginal depression on the slope up to the ridge.

There was an instant of utter disorientation as his implant was there again, and then an almighty series of explosions from the building behind him. Fifteen, maybe twenty in close succession? He held his breath as he was showered in fragments of debris.

The explosions stopped. No chain reaction, at least. But the noise continued, a deep creaking and groaning which told of structural damage, the sound of tiles and masonry crashing from a height onto the ground below. For a moment he thought the whole building was going to come down, but the noise died away and the skyline remained intact.

He sat up. The dome was gone as if it had never been there, replaced with the last glow of a glorious sunset. Two Spectran transports lumbered into the air and headed off as fast as they could, swinging round over the airfield and heading out across the ocean. From the ISO building came the sound of surely every alarm it contained.

Mark was just wondering how on earth to extract himself, Jason and Keyop and get down to the Phoenix when two ISO Z-17s roared overhead, fired two missiles into each of the transports, and soared away into the distance. Two flaming hulks dropped from the sky. There was a distant splash, and a rising, dispersing cloud of steam, and just barely audible above the alarms, the sound of cheering.

And, from five yards ahead of him, someone hyperventilating, desperate and unhappy.

 _He hates my guts and he came to warn me anyway._ Mark stood up, more wobbly than he'd have admitted, and went over to the shaking Hawk.

"Thank you," he said, and when that didn't seem to help at all, sat down beside him and put a tight arm round his shoulders. "Hang in there," he said. "They're gone, Don. You're safe here. Breathe slower. I'll get you indoors, one of the accommodation blocks, but you have to calm down enough to walk."

Don tried to slow his breathing - really, genuinely tried - and then twisted away from him and threw up, body shuddering in dry heaves. And then pushed himself determinedly to standing.

"Come on," Mark said. "Tom, tell someone I've taken Don Wade inside. They'll know why." He didn't give him the chance to suggest that maybe it would make more sense for the person with a command rank to go organise the evacuees, heading off down the hill with one hand between Don's shoulderblades.

Half way back to the door, and Don stopped abruptly. "I feel better."

"Good - you'll be fine once you're inside."

"No, _better_." His voice wavered in disbelief. "Real, not having a panic attack better. I don't need to go inside." He stood up straighter and looked at the sky - dark blue now, a crescent moon rising above the trees, the brighter stars just starting to show. "I don't _want_ to go inside."

Mark knew only too well that sense of disbelief that a massive problem had gone, mixed with raw terror that it might simply come back if you changed anything at all. "Then we'll stay outside," he said, low-voiced. "But I need to get out of sight from the ridge."

Don glanced at him, dropped his eyes back to the floor, and carried on walking, veering left towards Heron block. "Don Wade will go inside, of course," he said, using that same murmuring tone that nobody without implant-assisted hearing could possibly pick up from even five yards away. "Can the Eagle use the Hawk out here?"

"Probably." He had more pressing concerns. As soon as they rounded the corner, he transmuted and went to the bracelet. "G-Force, report."

"G-2, dealing with medical emergency. Out."

There was an even briefer buzz of acknowledgement from Keyop, which was all he'd expected. The Swallow should be on the far side of the ridge right now, if he'd followed orders, in a large group of people, and not able to talk on his bracelet. So, for that matter, should the Condor. Mark mentally rolled his eyes, unsurprised that Jason had found some reason to be in the thick of things.

His bracelet buzzed again with an incoming call. "Anderson. Commander, I need you in Control as quickly as possible."

"Understood." He lowered the bracelet slowly, considering his best route back to black section - up through the second floor windows, he thought. Was it structurally safe? It would have to be. He wasn't taking Don, though.

"Hawk, can you go help Anderson?"

Don stared at him in apparent disbelief, then transmuted and jogged off back towards the ridge.

It wasn't until Mark was half way across the lawns, heading for the black section windows, that he realised he'd used Don's callsign and treated him as a colleague. He wasn't at all sure this was a good thing, but he'd worry about that later.


	10. Chapter 10

The corridors of black section were deserted, lit only by red emergency lighting augmented by flashing alarms. He'd planned to take a window out with his boomerang, but it hadn't been necessary. There probably wasn't an intact pane of glass left in the building. Even in the central corridor fragments crunched under his boots as he ran. But the ceilings were still in place here, and the plaster on the walls was uncracked. That meant - probably - that the structure was safe in this section of the building, at least.

Control was fully internal. No windows to break, and the screens appeared to be intact. Something to do with the pressure difference in an explosion? He'd let someone else figure that one out. Mark dropped into the senior controller's chair and typed in his emergency codes, keeping everything mentally crossed. And around him, systems came to life. Screens flickered, disks whirred. The lighting changed from red to white, and the radio crackled to life.

"... in, Control. Repeat, come in, please."

"Control here," he responded. "Garuda, status?"

There was a single relieved gasp. "Status green. Request instructions."

Mark mentally rolled his eyes, looking around him at rebooting systems. Not that the crew of Garuda would have any idea what had happened here, to be fair. "Let me speak to G-6."

There was a brief pause. "Chief?" Rick's deep voice was unmistakeable.

"Eagle. Talk to me - all our systems are down."

"Mission was a decoy and we've had no contact with ISO since we jumped away. We've taken out the mecha which was generating the forcefield from orbit, and local ISO forces report they've destroyed two Spectran troop transports which took off from ISO USA. I think the threat's over, for now at least."

 _Think or know?_ But Rick was the one with the working sensors, who knew what the heck was going on, who was, much as Mark hated it, Galaxy Security's senior active commander. He was also possibly the least likely person Mark knew to guess and hope that things were okay. If Rick said he thought the immediate Spectran threat was over, that meant he was near a hundred percent certain.

He prodded the controls hopefully. Everything appeared to be working correctly, and the last thing they needed right now was Garuda sitting on the runway for all to see.

"Come on home. Cautiously. I think the sea doors are open, but I have limited confirmation." That would be somewhere on the consoles in front of him, which he had no idea how to use. His training was purely for emergencies like this, and limited to the main controller's role.

"Acknowledged." The connection went dead, and Mark tried to remember how all the other systems here worked. The intercom down to the hangar levels, for instance. Jason had said there were people down there; they should know that Garuda was coming in, and if they could deal with the rest of the docking procedure it would be far smoother than his shaky memories of how to initiate processes which normally he sat and experienced passively.

He finally navigated his way through comm menus to the relevant sub-level, and was feeling reassured by the relaxed reaction of the maintenance chief down there (sure, they'd got power back, they could get Garuda docked and shut down no problem), as Anderson came in. He headed to the logistics console and started flipping switches.

"Do you want this console?" Mark asked as soon as the maintenance chief signed off.

Anderson shook his head. "You stay there and handle Garuda." He was typing as he spoke, then talking into the comms unit, asking for damage reports, talking to other ISO installations worldwide and transferring every responsibility he could to them, recalling every operative who'd been away for the weekend, assigning cleanup teams to report to Ivanov, asking for information on casualties...

 _Casualties_. Oh lord, Team Seven. Unarmed, inexperienced, and up against a squad of goons with machine guns, and he'd left them to handle it. He'd sent Jason in that direction to clear explosive charges, and now he was dealing with a medical emergency.

 _You had no choice_ , he told himself firmly. _You're the strategist. You had to look at the bigger picture._

He kept the channel open, forcing himself to focus on the details of the docking procedure. All running smoothly, apparently. At least something was. And the main lighting was back on, and the screens in front of him were showing real data, and none of it was worrying.

"Confirm Garuda safely docked," came over the channel after a completely standard length of time. "Uh... Commander, any chance of a maintenance crew?"

"Stand by." He raised his voice. "Chief, Garuda's in and I'm being asked logistics questions I can't answer."

"I'll take it from here." Anderson stood up in a way which made it entirely clear that now he did want the big chair, and Mark hastily got out of his way.

In the corridor, things were looking a little better. The alarms had stopped shrieking. The lighting was back to normal here, too, though the orange alert lights of a team on mission were still... and they went off even as he noticed them. Garuda was back, and now there was a competent base controller in the chair the alerts would behave the way they should. Someone had swept up the glass fragments into little heaps, and at the far end of the corridor two of Grant's security team were clearing the heaps, too. From outside he could hear a whole lot of activity - multiple vehicles, many with sirens, and what sounded like a helicopter taking off from the lawns to the north. And Jason, detransmuted, approaching from the direction of the main black section entrance.

"I need to talk to you."

"Go ahead."

"In private." He headed towards their ready room without further explanation, and Mark followed him.

Nobody had started clearing up in here. One pane of window glass remained intact; the rest sparkled on the floor. The biggest screen had a crack from top to bottom. Spectra had never done damage this close to home before. Their _ready room._

"Team Seven was hit hard in the first attack," Jason said the moment the door was shut. "There's no easy way to say this, Mark. Nykinnen's dead."

 _That's impossible_. The world suddenly made no sense at all. "He... but it's Sunday. He's never here on a Sunday, even when we're the duty team, it's always Saturday. Why -"

He realised he was babbling. Stopped, with an effort. Could do nothing except stare at his second, whose face wore an expression of raw sympathy.

"Finding out exactly what happened wasn't a priority, but yes, he was there. Single shot to the head. It would have been quick."

Mark felt as though his brain was rebooting; very slowly, one process at a time. "Then he wasn't the medical emergency you were dealing with?"

"Nope. Nothing anyone could do for him, or four others. Dave O'Leary took a bullet to the spine and survived it somehow. No way he could be moved safely. I figured if I stayed with him, I could transmute as the forcefield came down and birdstyle would be at least some protection for both of us. Wasn't strictly necessary as things turned out - we must have disabled most of the local charges, a few ceiling tiles came down and the windows shattered - but I couldn't have left him there alone, he's badly hurt. You must have heard the chopper. He should be at Central Hospital by now. You want to chew me out for disobeying orders?"

"Oh, Jase." He could say nothing more. They'd both known Dave for a long time - Jason in particular; Dave was his fellow driver at ISO Racing. This was all far, far too close to home. This wasn't supposed to happen. ISO was supposed to be their sanctuary. They went out and put themselves in harm's way. It wasn't supposed to come to them. It really wasn't supposed to come to their friends.

No, he wasn't going to chew his second out for disobeying orders.

"You okay?" he asked instead.

"Not really." Jason sagged into the sofa, breathing nowhere near as steady as it should be, and Mark followed suit. Nykinnen was dead? Nykinnen, who'd been told to accept the senior members of G-Force as part of his training team and treat them just like everybody else, and had calmly done so? Nykinnen, who'd given Mark a desk job away from black section when that was what he'd asked for and needed, and let him rebuild his shattered confidence in his own time? Nykinnen, who he'd trusted without question, and who he'd known he could go to for help and would get it, no judgement, no queries?

He wanted to howl. More than that, he wanted the last few hours of his life back, so he could go through that door instead of locking it, get in the way of the bullet, do something, _anything_ to change what had happened.

"We should go help," he said instead.

Jason glanced sideways at him. "We should stay out of the way, and be prepared for a second attack. Someone else can sweep glass."

 _There's something badly wrong when Jason's the one with the strategic view_. Especially when he was right. Mark slowed his breathing, deliberately and steadily, closing his eyes and focusing. They'd been trained in methods for this, though he'd almost never needed to use them, not even in life-threatening situations and certainly never while sitting on the couch in the ready room. This was what they were for, though. Times when he caught himself losing the big picture, wanting to act rashly, behaving based on what he wanted to do rather than what he needed to do. Heart over head, the psych guys called it. Unless he had a this-is-wrong screaming premonition, it didn't work. Right now, no premonition at all. Just desperate regret. Nothing wrong with that, but it needed to be compartmentalised. The Eagle needed to be calm, and ready, and thinking clearly, and this technique allowed him to do that.

"You should transmute," he said.

Jason jumped - Mark rather suspected he'd been using the same almost-meditation techniques himself. "Huh?"

"If they try again - and that's what I'd do, if I had any attack capability left - then we're at least some use if we're in birdstyle when the power goes out."

"Where 'some use' means 'bulletproof' and not much else." But Jason pushed himself to his feet and transmuted, and then wandered over to the screens and flicked them on. They all lit up, even the cracked one.

"There's not as much damage as I expected," Mark said. "In here, especially. Everything seems to work. But that was one hell of an explosion, even though it wasn't as bad as it might have been."

"You haven't seen the front of the complex. It's a real mess. They never got near black section with the charges," Jason said. "Probably didn't guess it was black section. Would you think the ultra secure part of a base was the old building tucked away round the back?"

"If they even thought that hard about it. They must have known that the canteen wasn't high security, or the admin offices. Nearer the front exit, though. Safer. Closer to their transports. Less likely for them to get ambushed. Did you see any sign that they went up any of the stairwells? I didn't. They dumped their charges the first chance they got."

Jason shrugged. "So what you're saying is: goons are cowards? Yup, I'll buy that."

"Lucky for us. They -" He stopped at the tap on the door.

"Cleanup it is then," Jason commented, going to open it. "Oh. Hi, Rick."

The Kite, still transmuted, looked straight past him and caught Mark's eye. "So, no medical check, no debrief... I figured maybe you could tell me what the hell is going on?" His tone was light, but there was an edge in it which Mark didn't like at all.

They might gripe about debrief, but it was a ritual, something which always happened. It was when, as commander, he compartmentalised the decisions he'd made and handed them over. Not being debriefed right now wasn't particularly worrying him, but after his first mission in command - or any of his first twenty? He'd have been throwing up in the corner, desperate to discuss what had happened with someone and way too insecure to do so with any of his team-mates.

He stood up. "Get your team. Briefing room two, five minutes. Stay in birdstyle. I'll find Grant."

Rick nodded and was gone, and Jason frowned.

"Grant? Are you insane?"

"Anderson's way too busy. Ivanov's running the black section cleanup. Grant's probably sitting in his office feeling like crap and shouting at his security teams, but he'll be up to running a debrief. There's nobody else."

"There's you."

Mark would have laughed if Jason hadn't so obviously been perfectly serious. "Jase - I don't even know what their mission was!"

"Like that matters. Grant doing Rick's first debrief for a mission like this mess? He'll tear him to shreds."

"I don't think he'd -"

"Trust me on this one, Mark. Grant was in my first debrief and that's exactly what he did. If you won't debrief them, I will. You'll be a damn sight better at it."

G-Force's first mission, the one they'd come home from without Don. The one none of them ever talked about. Mark hadn't been part of G-Force then, hadn't known any of them, but from the little he'd been told, Jason had never been the same again.

Had any of that been due to the debrief? Certainly Grant and Jason had never been more than cordial, often a lot less, and Grant had been scathing about the decision to put Rick in command of Force Two from the start.

"Okay," he said. "But you're coming too."


	11. Chapter 11

_Grant's doing the debrief?_ Rick couldn't think of anyone he'd have wanted less. But he'd seen what Grant did, seen Jason handling it - badly, in his opinion - and thought about what he'd do himself, many, many times.

So when he led his team into the briefing room, every nerve on edge, it was rather a shock to find the Eagle in the debriefing officer's seat at the head of the table, with the Condor to his left cueing up the briefing tape.

"Major Grant?" he asked, hesitating.

Mark locked eyes with him. "If you'd rather have Grant than me, say. You've seen the state we're in. Procedure's not a big priority right now."

"I'd rather... not have him." He took the commander's seat, just to the right of the head of the table, considered the two helmets already sitting in the middle of the table, and added his to them. Without a visor in the way, suddenly all he wanted to do was rub his temples.

"You said you've had no medical?" Jason said abruptly. "I know they're in emergency triage mode, but right now if you need a doctor you jump the queue." He was looking pointedly at Jenny, who did, Rick agreed, look absolutely dreadful.

"I'm okay, sir. Just tired."

Jason raised his eyebrows. "If you say so. Put it this way, if you want to curl up on the floor and go to sleep, do it. I'm not going to tell anyone."

"I'll bear that in mind."

Mark cleared his throat, and Rick belatedly realised that he'd been doing the preliminaries for the tape, stating date and time and participants. "How much of the briefing tape do we need to watch?"

"None. It was all untrue. When we came out of jump, what we found was..."

* * *

Mark listened to Rick's retelling with one eye on the rest of Force Two. Jason was right - G-10 could barely keep her eyes open, but it clearly mattered to her to be here, and he wasn't sure where else she could go anyway. Medical were trying to keep people alive, the ready rooms were open to the elements, and he doubted anyone had even considered cleaning up the accommodation corridors yet. And he suspected that other parts of the building were in need of a lot more than just cleaning up. For the first time, he wondered whether they might be beyond saving, and what would happen if they were. He pushed that thought far down. _Compartmentalise. Debrief Force Two. Buildings aren't your responsibility._

This was a relatively happy team. Nobody was tensing at anything Rick said, or flushing, or looking as if they weren't sure whether to speak up, and to him that was what mattered right now. Operational details, such as whether they should have got Riga involved? That was something that the tacticians would doubtless consider at great length and then present their final decision as if it was the only possible one. He wouldn't have, though.

"... we made a conservative approach to ISO, but just before we reached water entry, we discovered that there was some sort of forcefield dome over ISO..."

For the first time, Jenny flinched hard, and Mark held his hand up. "Pause there. G-10, what's the problem?"

She flushed scarlet. "I'm sorry. I saw it very late and it's not my place to give instructions, but I didn't know what to do."

"You did the right thing," Rick said. "I'm not sure I did."

No arguing, no real strain, but they were both unhappy about it. Mark glanced at Jason, who'd been fast forwarding the flight deck video alongside Rick's recitation. "Can we see that?"

They sat and watched a couple of minutes on the big screen - standard approach, and from nowhere the team's most junior member calling an urgent abort and their pilot doing it, no questions asked. Definite displeasure from the commander. Jason paused it on a particularly unflattering image of Rick scowling.

Mark squinted at the screen - it was a camera feed of a camera feed, but even so... "G-10, what do you see there?"

"I didn't see anything either," said Rick. "But we all know there was."

Jason snorted. "You don't see it? No, and that's the point. G-10, you did the right thing. G-8, you did the right thing. G-6... you could look a bit less pissed off."

"Look and sound," said Rick. "Jen, I'm sorry. You see anything like that again, you do exactly the same. I'd much rather you were wrong sometimes than that we ram a forcefield even once."

She nodded, happier, and Rick smiled at her. "Do you want to explain your discovery? Seems only right."

"Okay, I guess..." There was a nervous glance at Jason. "Can you wind the tape on a fraction, so we can see... yes, like that." The central portion of the image now had dome-shaped shading over it, and it paused again.

"We were thinking of it as a hemisphere, but if you look at the shape, it isn't. It's a hyperbola. I thought that maybe the other half of it existed too."

"And she was right," said Rick. "To cut a long story short, we went up there, we jumped through the other forcefield, G-7 put a Super through the plasma launch tube of the mecha which was sitting on the other focus, and the forcefields came down when it exploded."

Jason held his hand up. "Just a minute there. This cutting a long story short... it involves your second orbital boost of the day, your third jump, a crash jump-exit, and G-7 starting the attack run on the mecha when G-6 passed out. And I think G-10's passed out in two of the three jumps?"

Rick glared at him. "We did our best."

"You're missing my point. This is me being bloody impressed. Everything had gone to hell and you did what was needed anyway."

Mark cleared his throat again. "That's cut too short for me. A crash jump-exit? Jason may have scrolled ahead but I haven't seen that part of the tape."

His second grinned, unrepentant, and Rick hesitated.

"We'll take the orbital boost as read. Keep it short, but I do want to know about this third jump."

Rick hesitated again, glancing sideways. Not wanting to drop anyone else in it, Mark realised.

 _This is wrong. We're colleagues. I shouldn't be sitting in judgement on what they did. The idea was to help them process it._

He reached out and turned the recorder off, very deliberately. There was an audible click. Six jaws dropped.

"I can't debrief someone who outranks me," he said. "You'll have the recorder tomorrow, or whenever it happens, and it'll be Anderson in this chair. For now, let's hear what happened. Actually... Jase, what did they do?"

"You realise I've watched it at twenty times speed with no sound?" But his second was relaxed, not his patent frown of disapproval, and he continued. "The second focus is nowhere near any sensible jump-points and they figured normal flight wouldn't get them through the forcefield, so they picked one down the right line and did an emergency abort to put them in roughly the right place. Got it pretty darn close, too."

"It... wasn't a good jump," Dylan said. "We jumped into enemy fire and only three of us came out of it conscious. We got so lucky."

Jason raised his eyebrows, and Mark realised this was his cue. "You were lucky any of you came out of it conscious," he said. "The time we had to do that, the one time... none of us did."

"Course, our jump-drive chamber was in three pieces at the time," Jason said easily. "Might have had something to do with how bad it was. Still, it was horrible. Really not recommended."

Paula gasped. "That rescue flight - when you jumped home in the G-1. That's what you're talking about."

"Yeah."

"You looked like death warmed over."

"Felt like it, too. I'm startled you were in any fit state to fight."

"Fine," said Rick. "You think I made the wrong call. What would you have done? I'm serious. I want to know."

Jason rolled his eyes. "I'm the last person to second-guess you, Rick. I said I was bloody impressed and I meant it. What would I have done? I'd have told my commander that a crash jump-exit was an option and I'd have waited for him to make the call. For what it's worth, I'm not seeing too many alternatives."

 _This could get heated, very fast_. Mark said, "My call? Any idea at all about how Fiery Phoenix would interact with that forcefield in realspace? Because I'm with everyone who's said they don't fancy trying to punch a spaceship through it."

Jason shrugged. "It might have worked. But just getting there in normal space would have been slow, and if it hadn't worked they'd have been out of options, because there's nothing to use as a jump-point anywhere round there."

"I'd have asked you for your opinion, you'd have said that, I'd have called for the crash jump-exit, and we'd all have crossed our fingers and hoped." Mark caught Rick's eye. "You may have to defend your choice when you get to a formal debrief. You've sat in these things, you know how they work, but I'll say it anyway. Base controllers struggle with the concept that there isn't always a good option. I don't know where they think one should come from, but any time you've picked the least worst it's always a sticking point. If I were you I'd tell him you considered the Fiery Phoenix option and discarded it. Jason's right, the fallback option from there is terrible. But it's something that the strategists will have on their list once they've spent a day analysing everything, when you had five minutes tops."

"You know I said I wanted command?" Dylan said. "I take it back."

Mark suspected that the rest of Force Two would normally have laughed. Now all he raised was a set of weary smiles. Rick patted him on the shoulder, and Dylan just shook his head and closed his eyes. On the other side of the table, Paula muttered something so quietly that even with implant-enhanced hearing he missed it, and both Dimitri and Jenny rolled their eyes.

 _They've turned into a team_. He never would have believed it. He'd taken four of them up to Comsat Three, only a few weeks ago, They'd been a bunch of individuals then. He thought he'd done a reasonable job of bringing them closer together, but Rick had cemented them together in a way he had thought might not even be possible.

He'd been given G-Force back. Rick had lost G-Force, been given command of Force Two... and it was starting to look as if it had been the right call.

"Anyway," said Rick. "We need rest, so I really am going to cut this short. G-10 and I both passed out in the crash jump-exit. G-10 was out until after it was all over. I was out for a couple of minutes, just long enough for G-7 to start the attack run on the mecha which was exactly where we'd expected. I really am too tired to analyse the combat right now, but the short version is that we put a Super through their plasma launch tube and it blew itself to hell. And the forcefield came down. Both of them. Like I said before."

He sat back, eyes locked with Mark, daring him to object.

Mark nodded. Rick had compartmentalised, handed everything over mentally, moved on. Job done. Well, almost done. There was one elephant still in the room, and he wanted it out in the open, not realised in the middle of the night.

"I think this is more complicated, isn't it? The Spectrans down here expected the forcefield to come down at sunset, presumably because that was easily identifiable from inside it."

Rick's face fell. "You mean we were wasting our time? They were going to drop the damn thing anyway?"

"You couldn't have known that," Jason said. "But it didn't come down at sunset. Not until it was practically full dark. They didn't take it down when they should have because they were tied up trying to fight off Garuda. If they had..."

"How long?" Mark asked. Jason had the tape with the timestamps, but it was Paula who spoke.

"It felt like forever. I was on point defence and I have no idea how many missiles I took out but it was a lot. But it can't have been..."

"Twelve minutes," said Jason. "Twelve minutes when the Spectran troops had cleared the building expecting it to go up right away and we were inside disarming explosives as fast as we could find them. I'd say that saved ISO from a huge amount of damage. All you can ever do is stop the bad guys from doing whatever it is they're trying to do. You did that. There's never time to analyse why they were trying to do it."

Mark nodded. It might not be right, or it might be a vast oversimplification, but it was what Force Two needed to hear right now.

"And the Spectran troop carriers?" he asked. "Looked like a pair of Z-17s. Were they in the right place at the right time, or did you put them there?"

This time Rick went scarlet. "Commander, I..."

"Spit it out, Rick," said Jason

"He looked at the table. "I didn't want to leave ISO USA unwatched and I didn't trust our own airfield hadn't been taken over. So I called the closest ISO airbase and told their patrol aircraft it was a foothold situation. They're who took the troop carriers out."

Mark frowned - why was this worrying Rick? "I'm not seeing the problem. Sounds like a good solution to me."

"He told them he was Galaxy Security Actual over a deliberately dodgy radio link," Paula said. "Sorry, Rick. Best just said."

Mark still didn't see the issue, but Jason was cracking up alongside him, shoulders shaking with silent laughter, and Rick hadn't looked up yet.

"Oh, man," Jason finally managed. "You are so lucky Grant isn't in here - don't you have form for impersonating a senior officer?"

 _Impersonating... oh_! "Rick," he said, "you _are_ Galaxy Security Actual. If a couple of Z-17 pilots assumed that Galaxy Security Actual's permanent callsign is Eagle, that's their problem. I'm guessing you were going for Eagle rather than Condor? I can't see you sounding much like Jason no matter how bad a radio link your comm-tech set up."

"I'm sorry, Mark," Rick said without looking up. "I needed them to do it without asking questions, and I wasn't sure they'd do that for me. And yes, it was you I was going for."

"Noted and not a problem, though Major Grant might disagree. But does that airbase still think they're in a foothold situation?" That needed dealing with right now. That in itself justified this debrief. He reached for the communicator, but Jason was quicker and handed it to him, channel open. "Chief?"

"Go on, G-1."

"ISO local may be acting under Foothold protocol."

"Armstrong-Tracy," said Rick. "And I'll need to be the one to stand them down. Sorry, Chief."

Anderson sighed audibly. "I'll patch them through to your bracelet, G-6. Stand by."

Mark considered making a joke about doing it instead, and didn't. Instead he sat and pretended not to listen while Rick announced himself as Galaxy Security Actual, repeated the instructions he'd given earlier, and told them to return to their normal chain of command. Not a mention of his callsign on either side of the conversation.

Rick cut the link and leaned back in his chair. "You know what I need? A hot bath, a hot meal and my own bed. And I suspect I can't have any of them. I'm seriously considering commandeering this briefing room - at least it's internal, no broken windows. And I -" He stopped as the room's communication device bleeped.

"G-Force, Force Two." Anderson's voice. "We are transferring black section operations to Centre Neptune. Launch in twenty minutes. Confirm, please."

"G-Force confirm," said Mark automatically.

Rick dropped his head into his hands momentarily, looked up again. "Force Two confirm." As the line went dead, he picked up his helmet, looking round his team. "Sorry, guys, seems like the day's not over after all. Get your personal stuff, I'll see you in Garuda in fifteen."

As the door shut behind them, Jason ejected all the tapes with a groan. "Centre Neptune? They're wiped, Mark. Are they even fit to fly?"

Mark had been wondering that himself, but they weren't his team, it wasn't his call, and what they needed right now was confidence that they were trusted.

"If they're not, they'll have to ask. You just sat through the same exchanges I did, Jase. Rick's the senior commander in Galaxy Security right now. I don't get to tell him what he can and can't do. For what it's worth, if he's too tired to fly safely, I think he'd say so."

"I hope you're right." Jason groaned again. "Who's even going? All of black section operations? Does that include Tiny? Does it include Princess? I'm presuming it includes Keyop."

"I'm presuming someone else is making those decisions," Mark said, and meant it. "Given the state this place is in, we could be based there for weeks. Given what Spectra just did to us, it could be permanent."

"So much for this season's races." But Jason headed for the door without serious complaint. Before he got there, he stopped and turned back. "Rick was right about one thing, though - I could murder a hot meal."


	12. Chapter 12

Jason didn't need fifteen minutes to pack to go to Centre Neptune, not for practical reasons. For a start they'd all long since made a point of leaving the basics there: a change of clothes, nightwear, toiletries. For a second the go bag had lived in the bottom of his closet since the war had started, with a duplicate in the trailer. He'd figured that sooner or later he'd be replaced by someone better than him - someone with no PTSD, no motion sickness, actual piloting skills, and less of a tendency to argue - and that he might have to leave in a serious hurry. It had been a while since that had been a concern, but the bags were still there. Everything he could need for survival for a week or so. Nothing that he considered _his_ , though. Nothing he cared about.

The go bag went into a larger holdall, together with a couple of books (one autographed by Jack Brabham, he wasn't leaving that in a room open to the elements). He was adding comfortable clothing and making a deliberate effort to ignore the smell of smoke in the air and the distinctive orange flicker over the buildings beyond his window when there was a tap at the door. It opened before he could reply.

"Jason?" That was Keyop, and he wasn't happy.

"What's up, kid?"

"I can't transmute."

That got his head out of the closet in a hurry. "What? You having implant problems?" _Is that why you came to me and not Mark?_

"Don't know. It's there, it just says no."

 _Which means what?_ Jason glanced at the clock. Seven minutes until they had to be on the Phoenix. Looked back at the miserable Swallow, shoulders drooping but still much taller than he had been even a couple of weeks ago, and had a moment of realisation.

"No as in 'adjustments needed, I've grown significantly'?" That had been the bane of his life when he'd first been implanted, especially since everyone else on G-Force at the time had already finished growing so it was just him who kept having to go get the wretched thing tweaked.

Keyop's jaw dropped and he nodded, a flicker of hope growing in his eyes as he accessed the implant again. "Maybe. I think so." He flushed and looked at the floor. "Haven't grown before, not since I've been in birdstyle."

"Then that's an easy fix." As he said it, he had doubts. It was an easy fix for the birdstyle technicians _here_ , with all the systems up and running. Could they do it at Centre Neptune? Could they even still do it here? How critical was whatever it was that was still on fire over at the front of the complex? It had to be bad or they wouldn't be relocating, not now, not with one exhausted team and one at half strength if that.

"Chief?" he said into the bracelet, despite Keyop's look of betrayal. "G-4 needs a birdstyle size adjustment. Does he come with us or stay here?"

"He comes with us. Thank you, G-2."

"You've got five minutes," he said, but Keyop was already sprinting down the hall towards his own quarters. Jason rather suspected he'd spent the last ten minutes panicking rather than packing, and what he'd left at Centre Neptune probably wouldn't fit any more. It was a long time since they'd overnighted there, in fact it was before... he yanked open the desk drawer, grabbed the TENS net he still used if a particularly vile migraine hit, and shoved it into the holdall, tucking the trailing leads out of the way of the zip. He had a nasty suspicion that he'd be needing it as soon as the drugs he'd taken earlier wore off. They'd been the emergency, back on his feet right now and deal with the consequences later variety.

He wouldn't have said he was sentimental, but he still took a last look around his quarters, open to the elements with shattered glass half way across the carpet to the door, before he headed out. This had been his room since before he'd commanded G-Force first time round. It wasn't home - that was the trailer - but it was his, and it was the first place he'd ever felt that way about. It might not be here the next time he was back.

.

Mark stood at the top of the stairwell next to the blank elevator panels, talking on the bracelet, holdall on the floor at his feet. Jason dumped his own holdall alongside and eavesdropped unashamedly, knowing his commander would wave him off if it was personal rather than business. They'd be taking passengers, apparently. Anderson hadn't been joking about moving black section to Centre Neptune. Multiple passengers - the technicians were turning the Phoenix's cargo hold into a passenger cabin right now, Garuda's too. Supplies. Ivanov was staying and Grant was coming. Princess was still in hospital and they wouldn't be waiting for her.

The speed of their departure and the continuing signs of fire worried him. Nothing massive, no flames shooting from the roof, but how much damage could a building take before it wasn't repairable? He didn't know, but suspected that with an explosion like the one they'd had here, and then a fire somewhere that it was difficult or unsafe to get at to put out, maybe add in ruptured gas lines, leaking fuel, rain or wind before they could make the buildings weathertight... this could still get worse.

Always before they'd had their safe base to come back to, their sanctuary, somewhere that Spectra couldn't touch them. Time spent at Centre Neptune had been a strategic pre-planned decision, not a necessity ordered without so much as a meeting beforehand. Not any more.

"We're on our way," Mark said finally. Jason picked up both holdalls and swung one over each shoulder without giving Mark a chance to protest; his commander might be walking unaided without too much problem these days, but Jason was surprised he'd managed to carry his kit this far and there was no way he'd be carrying it down three flights of stairs. As they set off down, Keyop joined them at a run, wearing a standard Academy jumpsuit. Just the three of them crewing the Phoenix for tonight's flight, and nobody had even suggested that taking the Phoenix out with a team of three was far outside their standard operating procedures even if Mark had been fit, he himself hadn't been full of anti-migraine drugs, and Keyop had been in birdstyle.

 _The rules have changed._

He didn't like it one bit.

* * *

And... that's it. For now. Many thanks to everyone who's helped, reviewed, encouraged, and here are a couple of review answers and author's notes I couldn't give at the time without spoilers! (Or just plain forgot to add to the relevant chapters, to be honest.)

There's no generator on the other focus. This is kinda-sorta along the lines that the Sun's at one focus of the elliptical orbit of the planets, with nothing at the other one. I have absolutely no idea how it would work for giant Spectran forcefields. Though I do like the idea that at some point the scientists are going to have hysterics at the concept that there might be one...

Mark's tapping "G 1" on the inside of the elevator door. Everyone Knows Morse :)

Armstrong-Tracy is named after the actual first man on the moon (Neil Armstrong) and "one of the first men on the moon" from my other fandom of Thunderbirds (Jeff Tracy). Since a minor plot point in one of my TB stories is Jeff Tracy _not_ having an airbase named after him because they picked the other guy, I thought I'd put it right.

The black and white striped cylinder explosives in long tubes are from the episode of Blake's Seven which also partly inspired the plot - "Star One", in which Our Heroes spend a while frantically running round the base trying to disarm a bunch of explosive charges which they suddenly realise they really don't want to go off. That episode also contains one of my favourite "oh crap" TV moments of ever, which doesn't appear to have made it into any quotes list. It's the one where Vila says "It's a shower of meteors. Very large meteors. And they're slowing down." Nope, not meteors, that's the alien invasion fleet...

And in a moment of coincidence, I'm writing this note while watching Michael Keating and Paul Darrow win Pointless Celebrities.


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